


You must be loco to mess with us (don't you know we're dangerous?)

by CourtneyCourtney



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mr. & Mrs. Smith Fusion, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Established Relationship, F/M, Mentioned Voyeurism, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2018-04-17 14:14:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4669643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourtneyCourtney/pseuds/CourtneyCourtney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I knew it,” Jake hisses, her blade nicking his Adam’s apple.  “All these years you’ve had an elaborate plot to kill me, working the long game with your kicking me ‘in your sleep’ and ‘accidentally’ using the fabric softener that gives me hives. What else did I miss, huh?  You try smothering me with a pillow when I was sick?  Put arsenic in my mashed potatoes?”  Jake gasps dramatically at his own hypothesizing.  “That roast last Thursday should have been my tip-off.  I should have realized then you were done waiting for me to get wise.”</p><p>Amy’s face falls, but she keeps the knife pressed heavily against his throat.  “What?  You sound ridiculous, and FYI, I worked really hard on that pot roast.”</p><p>“Yeah, about 45 minutes too hard.  That meat was so dry, I– ACK, not the face!  Not my face!” Jake shrieks as Amy slashes his left cheek.</p><p>(or, a gratuitous “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. FIVE (OR SIX) YEARS AGO

**Author's Note:**

> I feel I should tag this as crack, but the show itself is so madcap this probably wouldn’t be out of place in their universe.
> 
> It’s worth noting I started writing this story before I realized what a witch Wuntch truly is. I wouldn’t say she’s OOC, but she’s not the man-eating crocodile we saw in the S2 finale.
> 
> Title from Lonely Island’s “We’ll Kill U”
> 
> I actually made a dorky little mixtape for this story using some of the songs I listened to while writing; it's called ["love comes wearing disguises"](http://8tracks.com/cc-on-ao3/love-comes-wearing-disguises) and you can find it at 8tracks if the link I provided here is broken.

When Amy Santos-Peltz tells the story of how she and her husband met, she always plays up how smitten she was the first time she saw him across the crowded, smoky bar. She makes it as mushy as possible because as far as Jake and (most of) their mutual friends know, she is a big old-fashioned romantic who has been planning her wedding since she first owned a Filofax.

For Jake’s sake, she wishes that were true. His soft, adoring looks are half the reason she retells their love story with such gusto.

The other half is to remind herself not to blow her cover.

 

*******

 

They did actually meet at a bar. That part’s true.

Amy had rolled in straight off a flight from Havana. Hot Bird was the last place she wanted to be that night. Alright, maybe the second-to-last place – the virus she put on Castro’s computer might have fooled him then, but he and his techies had probably noticed the absence of several important electronic files by now.

She was jet-lagged. She already had three in-flight drinks under her belt. Even on a good night, Amy was too much of a homebody to enjoy going out after eleven o’clock. There were only two reasons she found herself in a cab headed downtown instead of headed toward her apartment.

  1. The birthday party was for The Agency’s prime hacker, Gina, who had already threatened blackmail if Amy didn’t come. She may have been flighty, but nobody was better at programming and maintaining their gadgets. Amy would be hard pressed to find anyone else who spent as much time with technology as Gina. (For the first six months she worked there, Amy mistook this quality for an amazing work ethic. Then she realized Gina actually spent most of her time playing games on her iPhone and Photoshopping weird shit, which is still fairly impressive.)
  2. She hated being rude.



As soon as Amy entered the room, Gina waved her over. Amy smiled and waved back, her heart definitely not as into it as it should have been until the man next to Gina at the bar turned around. He was distractingly cute. Amy wouldn’t lie - time seemed to slow down a little bit. She sent up a silent prayer that this wasn’t Gina’s secret boyfriend/bootycall/whatever it was she’d been bragging about for the last two weeks.

“No speaking until you’ve done two shots,” Gina commanded, handing both Amy and her guy friend two small glasses each of clear liquor. “Go go go!” They did as instructed; the man slammed his empty shot glasses on the bar with a grimace before turning back to Amy with a grin and a hand proffered for shaking.

“Brad Lazer, neurosurgeon.”

“Jake, sweetie, no,” said Gina, shaking her head.

“What, it’s a real name!” Jake protested.

“While that may be,” Gina conceded, “if she spends more than 30 seconds talking to you, she’s definitely going to know you’re not a doctor.”

Jake shot Gina a dirty look, then straightened up and tried again.

“Hi, I’m Jake Peltz.”

Amy didn’t fall in love with him then. Amy wanted to _destroy_ him.

Most of that was Five Drink Amy’s fault. But it was also Jake’s smile’s fault. He was trying for ‘confident and mysterious’ but coming closer to ‘smug jerk.’ Amy had seen that look too many times on too many guys before. Arrogance was not an attractive quality, attitude twisting a cute face or hot body into something unpleasant. She liked nice guys, guys who were soft-spoken and considerate, guys who didn’t look at her like a prize to be won. She wasn’t sure how exactly it was Jake was looking at her, but it made her uncomfortable.

She shook his hand anyway. “Amy Santos.” Under the din, she heard the grind of bone against bone.

Jake yelped but didn’t let go. “You have an exceptionally firm handshake,” he winced.  Four Drink Amy had the perfect retort for that, but Five Drink Amy bit her tongue, content to watch him squirm.

She didn’t have him on the hook for long. Instead, Jake smiled up at her and waggled his eyebrows. “But are you any good at arm wrestling?”

Jake’s refusal to back down plus her own alcohol-induced confidence led to a series of ill-advised bets throughout the night. Amy remembered a pool shoot-off that resulted in a ricocheted ball denting the wall by the bathroom, a round of darts in which neither of them landed anything close to a bullseye, and a card game that was maybe supposed to be Blackjack that ended when the bartender took their deck of cards away. (They had both tried to dramatically flip the table in protest but being on opposite sides had merely managed to move it over a foot.)

They ended up in a corner booth with beers snuck over by Gina after Jake and Amy were both cut off, betting on trivial shit like whether the other could roll their tongue or lick their elbow. Five Drink Amy had slowly morphed back into Four Drink Amy; no matter how much she told herself it was because she was tired, Amy couldn’t stop staring at his mouth.

Jake must have noticed; Amy remembered him watching her. All night, it felt like his eyes were on her. She wasn’t sure how exactly it was Jake was looking at her, but… but she thought maybe she liked it.

“I bet,” Jake had said on his turn, drawing out his sentence impishly, “that you’re a lousy kisser.”

Amy shook her head, a grin splitting her face. “You could not be more wrong.”

Jake smiled back. “Prove it.”

Amy leaned across the table before he finished, reaching for his face, and Jake met her halfway.

They made out _a lot_ that first night, until bar close, until Gina was long gone from her own party with a hook-up.  Amy thinks that was probably what being a teenager was supposed to be like.

The Santiagos were not your average Cuban-American family.  It wasn’t just the size, or the sheer intensity of their combined personalities.  Not even Kylie knew the extent of it, and she had ways of knowing _everything,_ especially things Amy wished she didn't.

It was the fact that everyone specialized in some form of espionage or another.  ( _Counterintelligence_ , Amy always insists, but when have her brothers ever listened to her?)

Apart from her parents, none of them ever worked for the same organization. There were enough agencies in need of their skills that it had never been a problem, and if it had been there was always the option of freelancing.  One way or another, state secrets got revealed, technology was traced, and defectors were quashed.

Still, the family name had a reputation.  Amy had years of practice locking people out of the loop, holding friends and acquaintances at arm's length.

Jake let her into every part of his life easily.  He invited her to track down new food trucks when their lunch breaks lined up.  He invited her to hang out with him at the Laundromat while he did his clothes.  Amy almost regretted having her own washing machine in her apartment, but she didn’t need to be literally airing her dirty laundry.  His apartment was a hole compared to hers but they had sex on every flat surface in both places.

Amy liked how normal it was; it was novel to be so thorough and calculating at work but to also be having a crazy, sexy, whirlwind romance on the side.

In turn, Amy invited Jake to live with her (a lot of his stuff migrated over there beforehand anyway) after five months.  It was hard at first to adjust, seeing his belongings mingling with hers, learning to live with the clutter synonymous with Jake Peltz, but after a while it felt right.  It felt cozy.  Amy's heart swelled a little every time she glanced at the two toothbrushes in the holder on the sink.  It was fun to come home to him at night, to have somebody to indulge in that side of her.

The onset of the honeymoon phase almost resulted in her new partner strangling Amy.  She could stop talking about Jake as easily as she could stop breathing, and Agent Diaz often seemed to be considering that option as her quickest solution.

("What does he do?" Rosa finally asks during one unusually dull stakeout.  Internally, Amy does a tiny, tiny victory dance.

"He teaches Drama at Goor-Schur High School," she replies cooly.  "No big."

Rosa lowers her binoculars to glance at Amy.  "That explains a lot."

"I know," Amy agrees.  "He's always doing these characters -"

"Too much information," Rosa says and resumes ignoring her.)

Jake was the best, though.  He had a shit ton of parking tickets, but no other offenses Amy turned up in her preliminary background search after their first real date.  Besides, Gina had known him practically her whole life; he couldn't be that bad.

Jake wasn't a cheapskate.  He knew the importance of saving money, but he took Amy out to nice restaurants or bars, sometimes when she had a bad day, sometimes for no reason at all.  He also was more than content to order in and spend the night snuggling on the couch with a movie or Netflix playing in the background.  Jake already had a lot of the same movies and shows as Amy in his queue.

Jake’s mom said Amy was the nicest and prettiest girl he ever brought home, even before Amy complimented Mrs. Peltz on her Precious Moments collection.

Jake wanted three kids, two daughters and a son, just like Amy.  (Rosa threatened to vomit during this conversation, but whatever, Amy maintains that this was important and adorable information.) **  
**

Slowly her list of Cons for having a long-term relationship with a civilian morphed into a list of Pros.

 

Jake proposed at the same bar they met at nine months later.

Amy had rolled in straight off a flight from Monaco, ducking out of the downpour that had started since she got back.  She was on a high already, her team having helped overthrow a dictator in a small nation a world away just hours ago.  Her heart nearly pounded out of her chest when she spied Jake waiting with a small velvet box in his hands.

"I know this is really, ridiculously fast," Jake told Amy, looking up at her earnestly after going down on one knee, "but sometimes when you know you just know. So, Amy Santos, will you make me the happiest man on earth by marrying me?"

The logical part of her brain said, "Nononononono," and "This is a _Bad Idea_!," and worst of all, "Would Jake still be the happiest man on earth if he knew what you really did for a living?"

Instead, the words "Yes, absolutely!" left her mouth. **  
**

(She told her team later it was the adrenaline talking.  In truth, it was all her.  She loved Jake - _does_ love him still - and loved the idea of coming home to this time after time.  She wanted to hold on to him and the slice of normalcy Life With Jake entailed.  She wanted him, and he wanted her back which made things simple.)

Six Drink Amy reared her ugly head at the tail end of her bachelorette party, when there was just her, Rosa, Gina, and one bottle of Merlot left. It was so bad Gina wouldn’t even mock Amy the next morning when Amy found her dozing on the couch. Rosa apparently left after the freaking out and passing out, but not before slapping Post-Its on every mirror in the apartment demanding, _Remind me to **never** get married_.

(“I don’t really remember most of it,” Amy tells Gina over waffles the next afternoon, when her hangover has abated enough for them to leave her apartment for real food. “The six-drink thing, I mean.”

“Do you remember crying so much we ran out of tissues and had to give you a pair of socks to cry into, and then you started crying _about_ the socks because they reminded you of doing laundry with Jake?” Gina asks.

She does, unfortunately. “Yeah.”

“That _was_ most of it.”)

“You need to just tell Jake,” Gina commanded.  "He's a great guy, I guarantee he will have your back."

“I will,” Amy lied.

She tried not to cringe too much at the sight her fake name on a very real marriage license two weeks later.

While the actual ceremony was a tiny, city hall affair, Jake insisted on a reception at Sal’s Pizza, where it got crowded enough for Amy to sneak in her parents and brothers. Naturally, being her family, they rotated in and out so they wouldn’t all be caught together if someone recognized them and decided to snitch. At Jake’s questioning she was able to pass them off as generic relatives - aunts, uncles, cousins (she has so many real aunts, uncles, and cousins she bets Jake won’t even remember or keep them straight) - but they were there to congratulate her all the same.

Jake's family was there to congratulate them, too, of course. It was the first (and to date the only) time Amy had the pleasure of meeting Roger Peralta. The man was more than obnoxious, but Amy was more interested in the man she assumed was a friend of his.  He looked distinguished, with closely cropped white hair and wise, dark eyes.  He also spoke in a solemn monotone and gave a toast that left half the room in stitches and the other half looking around in confusion.  Amy saw him speaking to Jake at the end of the evening, his hand on her husband's shoulder and Jake getting a little misty-eyed.

She asked Jake about the man months later, but Jake said he didn't want to talk about him. Amy let it go for the time being; it was only fair for Jake to have a secret or two.

For a honeymoon, Amy convinced Jake she always wanted to go on an Alaskan cruise, and he bought it. Amy was kind of surprised he didn’t divorce her afterwards, but her boss needed a favor and was willing to foot the bill for their trip if Amy completed her mission.

Besides, Amy got her information, Jake got to meet the captain and pretend to steer the ship for an afternoon, _and_ they were probably spared from food poisoning because they barely left their cabin.  It was a win-win-win situation.

 

Marriage becomes a different kind of game. Amy is awesome at compartmentalizing.  She may not be Amy Santos exactly, but since it's what Jake thinks, she's going to be the best Amy Santos she can possibly be.

(She mentions this exactly once to Rosa, who in turns tells Amy she sounds like a missing scene from _Gone Girl_.)

It's stressful, though.  Pretending to be the perfect housewife gets dull, gets to be another obligation for her, especially when Jake is chaperoning debate and speech contests or the rare overnight trip for the school. 

On the flip side, sneaking away to do missions gets difficult.  Amy had to go from taking assignments around the globe to never straying too far from New York.  At first it was fine because she didn't want to stray too far away from Jake.  Over time, though, it mutated into this paranoia that he would notice if she was gone too long, if one too many 'business trips' would tip him off.  (God forbid she miss another double date night with Terry and Sharon).

Amy starts a list when they move out of the city.  On their first night in suburbia, she waits until Jake is sound asleep then shuts herself in the laundry room downstairs.  The quiet of the neighborhood is disturbing; she doesn't really want to be alone with her thoughts right now.  (She'd also kill for a shame cigarette, a habit she kicked before the wedding two years ago.)

Instead, Amy turns to a blank, lined page in her binder.  So far she's used the binder to organize her tips to maintaining a normal life.  It's an eclectic mix of recipes, coupons, behavior pattern reports focusing on middle class women, lists of what the Average Jane would or wouldn't notice in certain social situations, and emergency escape routes, but everything stays in its proper file so it works.

Amy draws a vertical line on the designated paper, splitting it in two columns: _Real Amy vs. Fake Amy_.  She fills the Real Amy side with everything she wishes she could tell Jake right now, everything she should have told him from the beginning.

When she has enough written to ease her conscience, Amy snaps the rings open, takes the sheet out, and looks it over.  It's a start, she supposes.  She can always add to it later.

Amy folds the paper into a neat square, then tucks it in the emergency getaway bag she keeps stashed behind the dryer.  Just in case she has to come clean to Jake in a hurry.

It isn't easy.  It's worth it though.  Jake deserves the best.


	2. NYC SUBWAY, Five Years Later, 4:18 PM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which we meet Amy's agency and discover a traitor in - all right, *adjacent to* - their midst)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! I'm not even sure this makes complete sense or that I'm happy with it, but I had to get something out into the universe. I was complaining to a friend about how this chapter ended up being more exposition than I wanted, but hopefully that means I get to write the super fun stuff now. Yay for B99 once again gracing our screens on a weekly basis!

“You wanna tell me what the _hell_ that was, Santiago?” Rosa growls in Amy’s general direction as their subway car pulls away from the station. Amy notices her fingers clenching and unclenching through the leather of her jacket’s pockets, like her partner really wants an excuse to mess up someone other than Amy right now. Amy doesn’t blame Rosa; Amy herself is one-hundred-percent nerves.

Amy sighs, removing her Mets cap and hooker wig before tossing them onto the floor. She leans forward, putting her face in her hands so Rosa can’t see or hear her clearly. “There was someone else.”

“What.” If her partner wasn’t ready for a fight before, she is now.

Amy balls up her fists before turning to face Rosa with as much dignity as she can muster.  Rosa isn't the only one allowed to be mad here, OK? Amy _is_ mad; it wasn't a competition before, but apparently is one now, and she  _hates_ being out of the loop like that, hates missing the details that lead to disasters like this.

“I said,” Amy hisses, sitting up straight once more, “someone else got there first. From the lobby to the nineteenth floor, I didn’t interact with _anybody_ , let alone anybody weird, but when I got to the Ianucci’s suite, the files were gone.”  The Ianucci mob rolled Old School; as hard as their techies scrubbed, no one turned up digital copies of the files Amy needed to retrieve.  Turned out they only kept paper copies.  Amy didn't mind; she had been in heaven when she learned that detail, both because of someone's commitment to being a luddite (quaint, but also kind of ingenious in today’s culture) and because of the challenge it posed. It seemed like fewer and fewer retrieval cases needed her type of hands-on experience.

She had planned a simple sneak-in-sneak-out, had arrived at the correct room on the correct floor without being called out or spotted by the guards lurking at each end of the hallway. However, once she had actually gotten _in_ the suite, the files had been gone.  Amy had cased the place, going so far as to look under the bed and behind the toilet for the list of names she needed to bring down their operation.  Nada.  Squat.  Either she had been fed a lie or someone else had beat her there.

To make matters worse, the hotel's fire alarm had started going off right as Amy was preparing to rifle through the room again. She's still running on the same adrenaline that somehow got her out of the room, down the hall, and into the stairwell without the Iannuci guards catching her. She's beyond lucky to have gotten out unscathed, blended perfectly into the swell of evacuating hotel guests, but still, it stings that she didn't complete her mission.

It was like a bad dream, Amy thinks. She was so desperate to find the perp who pulled the alarm, who stole the Intel and blew everything for her, so desperate to find someone to finger in the crowd who looked familiar that she thought she had seen...

Amy shakes her head.  "This is a nightmare."  She means the past twenty-four hours, but Rosa doesn't need to know that yet.  They're on a job now, on the subway since it makes them harder to trace, harder to pin around the scene of the crime than if they had driven anywhere or taken a cab.  They can chitchat on their own time.

They sit in a silence for a few seconds, Amy trying to keep her breathing even.  It's fine.  Everything is fine.  Nothing to see here folks, situation normal. 

“Any… _other_ reason you might be off?” Rosa asks, sounding maybe a little disgusted with herself.

God bless her for trying, Amy thinks.  Chitchat, here they come.

Amy glances around the car, checking for any eavesdroppers before realizing she should have done that  _much_ , much earlier in this escapade.  It's too late for that now; she can only cover her tail here and now. She turns back to Rosa.

"I don't... I mean, yes," Amy admits.  "I'm not sure where to start, though."  She fidgets her wedding ring around in the right pocket of her jacket; she never wears it outside the house unless Jake is with her, but she always keeps it somewhere on her person.

Rosa rolls her eyes. “Spit it out.”

“Jake and I were supposed to have an appointment with a marriage counselor this morning and Jake didn’t show up,” Amy blurts out.

“A, Your marriage is fine,” says Rosa, “and B, I don’t care.”

“I was snooping,” Amy continues. She has to confess to someone, and Rosa is the most secretive person she knows. “Jake has been acting weird – ”

“You have met your husband, right?” Rosa asks. “Weird is kind of his thing.”

“Ugh, weird-for-Jake weird,” Amy clarifies. “You knew what I meant. I was doing laundry two weeks ago when I found this note in his pocket. It was a reminder to meet someone named Bianca at the Starbucks in the Woolworth Building.”

Rosa shoots her a dark look. “So?”

“ _SO_?” Amy repeats, loud enough to get more than a few glares from the rest of the people on the subway. “ _So_?” she tries again, quieter this time, making sure to get right up in Rosa’s face. “That’s a yellow flag for an affair right there. That name alone has ‘cute, younger model’ written all over it. Who else would this ‘Bianca’ character be?”

Rosa shrugs. “Student teacher. New student. Inner city kid who needs help and has no one else to turn to.”

“And now I feel like a terrible person,” Amy replies slumping down in her seat. “But if she were, wouldn’t Jake have told me? Why wouldn’t Jake tell me?”

"Because you're overbearing, prone to jealousy, and jump to conclusions like this," Rosa supplies. Amy hopes that was meant to be a list of options and not a list of opinions.

"I know I should trust Jake," Amy says, staring down at her hands in her lap.  "He has given me no reason not to trust him, but I'm starting to..."

"Not trust him?" Rosa finishes.

"It's just me, probably," Amy continues.  "It's just the job and the risks and yadda yadda yadda.  I think it's getting to my head."

"I hear ya." Rosa nods sagely.  "I watched this one guy at my last agency go nuts over a couple years. Hearing voices, hallucinating cases and missing information, starting yapping to anyone who would listen about national phone tapping, the works. Bosses took him on a hunting trip upstate and we never saw him again. Stuff kinda like that?"

"Um, no," says Amy, "although maybe, kind of.  I just, I thought I saw Jake there. Today, at the job."

The lull in their conversation this time is odd.  Amy isn't sure why; it doesn't last longer than usual, and Rosa's body language doesn't betray any discomfort (it never does), but something's in the air.

"What does  _that_ mean?"

Amy shrugs, suddenly uncomfortable.  She shifts in her seat.  "I don't know.  There was just this guy, like in profile, that had his nose and hair. He walked past me really fast on the way out of the lobby, I didn't get a read on him." She finally dares to look up at her partner. "Why?" 

“I wasn’t gonna say anything,” Rosa says quietly, avoiding Amy’s stare, “but yeah. I thought I saw him too.” She scowls. “It was that stupid hoodie.”

Amy groans. Jake has this sweatshirt from college, a ratty gray and navy blue thing that _might_ have been passable attire before the wear and tear had the chest not been emblazoned with the slogan “NYPD – New York Pole Dancers.” (At least there wasn’t a graphic design on it, Amy has thought to herself time and time again.) It really is the stupidest sweatshirt she has ever seen.  It isn't even funny; the set-up for a promising joke, _maybe_ , but it doesn't work on its own. It's just an abandoned premise, as she's told Jake time and again.

It’s also not uncommon. There have to be hundreds of them floating around the city.

But Amy knows. She knows there are two dime-sized holes on the right sleeve wrist that somehow haven't stretched or snagged on anything in all the years Jake has worn it.  She knows there's red ink speckles on the left front near the stomach pocket from an exploded paper-marking pen. She knows the right hoodie string has frayed apart at the end but the left one is still knotted and has its aglet intact. She sees it every single time Jake does housework, when he rakes the leaves or tries to fix the leaking kitchen sink.  Hell, she  _just_ put it through the wash, the same day she cleaned his jeans that held the note from Bianca.

"I was tracking everyone that stepped in and out of that hotel," Rosa reminds her, breaking Amy out of her reverie, "and I couldn't get a read on him either. No distinguishing features apart from the sweatshirt. Didn't walk funny, didn't look at the security cameras, always moved with a group of people but didn't cling to anyone specific..."

Amy tries to think positive despite the growing knot in her stomach.  Lots of guys in New York have brown hair.  Lots of guys in New York have that obnoxious hoodie.  Lots of guys came and left lots of buildings on lots of days.  But Amy knows Jake.  Amy knows this one guy didn't set off her radar for no reason.

"I mean, maybe he is and maybe he isn't," Amy says lightly, super breezy.  She's got this on lock (that's still a thing, right?). Everything is A-OK.  "Schrödinger's suspect, am I right?"

"No," Rosa replies flatly.  "And there’s one way we can find out for sure.”

 

**THE AGENCY, 5:15 PM**

 

“Nope, sorry, can’t do it, suuuuper busy.” Gina has yet to look up from her smartphone, which is par for the course, really.

Amy understands; Gina has a lot to oversee.  She's stuck in one of those weird almost-officially-in-charge-but-not-yet-because-someone-on-the-upper-rungs-is-trying-to-prove-a-point positions.  Gina keeps tabs on the cameras that keep tabs on their targets.  She organizes all the case files, tracks who checks out what equipment. Gina, like, _is_ their eyes and ears, and their brain.  The only reason she hadn't been handling their case this morning is because it was supposed to be simple, plus Amy and Rosa were pros.  Gina is a pro as well, too valuable to spare on petty crimes.  Gina is important.  Gina is...

Amy frowns, recognizing the steady-yet-occasionally-plinking music. Gina is playing Neko Atsume.

“Clearly,” says Rosa.

Seven years in, Amy isn't really feeling The Agency anymore.  It's boring.  Everything is boring, starting with the name.  It was fun at first, the anonymity, the idea that something as banal as a sixth-floor office in downtown Brooklyn called only _The Agency_ was really a secret hub of spies, a meeting place for precious information trade-offs and high-stakes espionage mission planning.  Now it seems silly. Current case non-withstanding, it's get in, get the intel, and get out, wham bam thank you ma'am.  Amy wonders if she can work that into tonight's dinner conversation for Jake's "title of your sex tape" sake.

As far as Jake and most of the metropolis knew, The Agency was a temp agency.  Jake thought his awesome wife sat in a cubicle every day matching employees to employers; Amy thinks she can blame some of that on the pantsuits, but she'd like to think she's just that good of an actress.  It might be more exciting if she did work at a temp agency, though; it would be something different, at least, and she'd still get to help people.

Clearly she isn't alone in feeling bored, but at least Gina could hide her disdain a little better.

"This is important, Gina," Rosa says, surprising Amy with her intensity.

"Are you two seriously telling me," Gina replies, looking up at last to give her friends the stink eye, "that you need _me_ to ID your husband, that you can't recognize the man you've been smooshing booties with for five long years?"

"Gina, you know Jake," Amy adds, leaning in to hopefully get the hacker to make eye contact with her.  "You've had a lifetime of doing this, both finding Jake and finding people on film."

Gina says nothing, just tilts her head knowingly. 

Amy sighs.  "You're the best, Gina," she says flatly, knowing exactly what kind of ego-stroking her co-worker wants in exchange for her help. "You are truly the greatest and this entire organization would be in shambles without you around to support it."

Gina flicks her eyes over Amy's shoulder to look at Rosa.  Amy doesn't even have to turn to know Rosa is rolling her eyes, but the sound of creasing leather lets her know Rosa has also crossed her arms in displeasure.

"You're the greatest and we need you," Rosa adds, stolid as ever.  "Oh baby oh baby."

Gina hums.  "What is it specifically - "

" _Gina_ ," Amy barks. She loves the woman, really, but Amy needed her friend to just  _do her job_ this once without making everything a game. Seven years was a long time for these "bargaining tactics."

"Oh my God, fine _stop it_ , you're embarrassing me." Gina seems pleased, putting her phone down and rising from her chair.  "If there is simply _no one else_ who can do this; Imma need five minutes to get this joint popping," she adds, gesturing around at the various electronic equipment at her disposal. Gina has the windowless office all to herself after she caused mild but legit mental breakdowns among several co-workers previously assigned to share the space with her. Amy isn’t sure what this says about her and Rosa willingly spending time with Gina outside of the office.

Rosa looks down at her watch. "300... 299... 298... 297..."

Amy sighs.  Typical Wednesday.

 

**(MORE THAN) FIVE MINUTES LATER  
**

 

"There," says Rosa, taking initiative, slapping the cursor to pause the video at exactly the right time. "That's the guy."

"There," Gina mimics, turning to Amy. "Happy now?"

Amy squints at the grainy footage on the screen in front of her.  "Not really," she admits. She's a little dizzy from the feed; quality wasn't the strongest suit of the camera directly outside the hotel entrance.  They also took _forever_ to get the video to the correct part, Gina starting and stopping erratically (well, erratically for Gina), either too soon or too late.  The technical difficulties were enough for Rosa to push the hacker away from the keyboard, wrestling the mouse away to take initiative.

The three women observe the screen in silence for a moment.

"Have you both gone blind?" Gina asks, tone more condescending than concerned.

Amy feels slightly foolish. At first, second, and third glance, she isn't sure how she could mistake this man for her husband. He's wearing a baseball cap and jean jacket, neither an item she's seen in Jake's wardrobe up to now. Same goes for the sunglasses, dark jeans, and sneakers; they're all non-descript clothes, not too old but clearly not brand new.  The sweatshirt is the only article she recognizes.

Outer appearance aside, the guy moves differently, even accounting for the slow motion of dissecting it frame by frame. His gait is different from Jake's, more ponderous, and he slouches.  The guy on the tape even looks shorter and stockier.  Everything is different, except…

Except even with the shitty cam quality Amy can still make out ink splatter on the left front stomach pocket. She can still see the frayed right cord and the perfectly-knotted left cord.  If she squints she can see a few familiar errant curls peaking out from under the hat's edges.

“This is stupid,” says Rosa.

“Hear hear,” says Gina.

“Maybe Jake loaned that sweatshirt to somebody,” Rosa continues, shooting Gina a withering look for interrupting her.  “Maybe somebody stole it from him at the gym.”

“Maybe…” Amy isn’t persuaded.  She just saw it at their house, but maybe between then and now something happened.  “Can we check any of the neighboring cameras for a better angle?  Any other stores on the block with surveillance?”

“What is this, 1994?” Gina scoffs.  “Of course the other buildings have cameras.”

"Shut up," retorts Amy.  "So check as many camera as you can from that area. Across the street, outside adjoining buildings, maybe try from a few minutes later, or even later in the day."

Gina hip-checks Rosa away from the station and sets back to clacking away at the keyboard. "Aren't you going to tell her to let it go?" Gina asks in Rosa's general direction.  It _looks_ for all the world like she's inputting code, but Amy happens to know half of those commands are gibberish. **  
**

"I don't know," says Rosa, eyeing Amy more to include her in the conversation than to invite her to jump in.  "I would, normally. But I think she might be onto something." She folds her arms and goes back to watching Gina like a hawk.  "I think Jake was definitely there."

"Thank you, Rosa," Amy says, and she means it.

"Whatever," Rosa scoffs.  "Let's just do this so we can go home."

"Oh," Gina begins before stabbing one last key, "kaaaay, Friday Free For All it is."

"It's Thursday," Amy corrects her before every single available screen in the room is lighting up. Each monitor displays new video from the requested surveillance cams all playing simultaneously. 

“BOOM," Gina declares, "we’re in business.”

“Gina, what the hell,” says Rosa. Amy agrees, too bombarded by images to make the mental space to voice her opinions.

"If I didn't know any better," comes a voice from the doorway that makes Amy and Rosa straighten up and makes Gina briefly ( _briefly_ ) look up, "I'd say the three of you have some explaining to do."

Amy turns to face Madeline Wuntch, The Agency's founder and primary overseer. Confidentially-speaking, Amy isn't crazy about the woman on a personal level (she doubts many people can say they are). Amy is all about exemplary work ethic, but Wuntch can be so stern about protocol. Even _Amy_ is willing to bend the occasional rule for justice or the greater good or whatever. But Wuntch is good at her job, and Amy respects that.  She wouldn't have stuck around the Agency this long if she hadn't admired and/or tolerated Wuntch on some level.

"Director Wuntch," says Amy, rushing to placate her boss. "I know what this... well, OK I don't really know what this looks like per se, but I can assure you, nothing is happening that shouldn't be happening. Rosa and I were looking into a lead on the Ianucci information situation and we needed Gina's assistance."

Wuntch jerks her head sharply to a screen to Amy's left. "Really?  Because it looks like you and your 'gal pals' are wasting valuable work time and resources spying on your husband.”

“Huh?” Amy swears her brain stops working, just for a minute.

Sure enough, the footage from the camera facing the hotel across the street now shows Jake walking out of a neighboring store.  The disguise is gone, the mask off.  It's Jake, plain and simple, looking around the street yet looking relaxed.Rosa scoffs reflexively when he pops the collar of his leather jacket, the jacket Amy bought him last Christmas.

“It’s a coincidence,” says Amy shrilly, rushing around to Gina's master computer to pause the video, to the pause the _correct_ video, oh sweet Lord why are there so many feeds currently running, what button is she supposed to push to make everything _stop_? “It’s a coincidence! It’s… it’s…”

No one is cutting her off. Amy turns around to look at them, Wuntch, Rosa, and Gina all staring at her blankly.

“It’s not a coincidence, is it?”

Wuntch frowns. "What is he looking at?"

Amy whips back to the screen, where the security footage is still stopped. Jake does appear to be looking intently at something off the screen, hands on his hips as if perplexed.

"Gina, check the angle," Wuntch commands.

"Do I look like a protractor?" Gina replies.

"Yes," says Rosa.

" _Wow_. You're cutting me deep, Ro."

"Oh no," Amy groans.  "I think I know."  She isn't sure it matches up exactly, but knowing her luck it does. She knows this is the camera from above the store Jake came out of, and she knows from the time stamp that it's around the same time Jake left. She knows that _that's_ across the street from where he stood and that on said cross street, a very familiar duo is speed-walking away from the scene **,** one tall with curly dark hair dressed entirely in black, and one with a bright red wig covered by a baseball cap glancing suspiciously over her shoulder.

"Shut it down, Gina," Wuntch orders, raising her voice to compensation for her rapid march toward the door. "We're on temporary lockdown until further notice in case the suspect followed you here and IDed any other Agency agents."

Reflexively, Amy wants to text Jake that she’ll be home late due to the lockdown. She feels guilty, sure, but maybe he'll buy that there's construction on their city block in addition to the traffic...

She's halfway through drafting a spiel before she remembers the lockdown is his fault.

"...Son of bitch."

 

**FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER**

 

“Maybe Jake has a brother he never told me about,” Amy posits as Rosa enters the conference room with a manila folder.

“With the same first name,” Rosa says, quickly skimming the file. “And face. And birthday, apparently.”

“Evil twin?  There hasn't been much research, but it _is_ a documented phenomenon in real life, however rare -”

“ _Amy,”_ says Rosa. Amy deflates, flopping down into one of the hard plastic chairs.  The rest of the Wuntch ladies were staying out of it, leaving Amy alone to pace.  Wuntch had, in not as many words, decided to keep Amy confined until she knew Amy wasn't playing dumb about her hubby's suspicious activity.  Amy both respected and resented that.

She had also tortured herself by going over the footage again, looking at the video frame by grainy frame.  She thinks at one point she can spot Jake looking upset, looking somewhat melancholy as he glances to the right.  She also thinks she might be losing whatever grip she has left on her sanity.

Rosa whips a photo out of her folder and slaps it down on the table in front of Amy.  She waits for her partner to glance up at it before speaking.  "Meet Jacob Peralta.  Almost no official files on him - got a birth date, social security number, and a link to one major federal crime in 2008.  After that he falls off the radar."  Rosa takes the seat next to Amy, staring her down like a hawk as she perches on the back of the chair.  "Unofficially, word is he's part of Operation Velvet Thunder."

Amy feels a mix of anger and shame hit her like a lightning bolt. Only Wuntch seems to know who runs OVT, but based on how frequently her boss decries the organization, Amy knows they must have stabbed Wuntch in the back pretty severely to leave blood that bad. The group runs almost counterpoint to The Agency, taking cases less legal than Amy's for-the-greater-good fare, dabbling in the occasional black market trade. Jake being linked to OVT is decidedly Not Good.

"Rosa, do you know what this means?" Amy asks, keeping her voice low.  It sounds less quivery that way, one less thing to betray her today.

"That I should retroactively win the office-wide bet from 2009 that you would be the last agent here to get married?" a voice from the doorway asks.

Amy and Rosa both turn to see Gina watching them, phone in hand.

"I'm still married," Amy says reflexively.  "I'm totally married."  She can _feel_ the judgment from both her friends, twin unimpressed gazes boring into her, and Amy can't believe this is the hill she's going to die on, but here she is.  "I think.  Technically, one of my aliases is married to his alias.  It's like, if I changed my name before we started dating and then _accidentally_ neglected to let him know before... ugh, forget it."

Gina tsks.  "I don't think that's legal, hon."

"OK," says Rosa, turning her glower on Gina, "I have to say it.  You look way too self-satisfied for someone whose lifelong BFF was just more-likely-than-not revealed to stand for everything _this_ company stands against.  Spill."

"Yeah, where were you?" Amy adds, momentarily happy to have the heat off herself.

"Just takin' care of business," Gina replies, waving her phone around.

Amy's heart flips in her chest.  "You called Jake?"

"Nope," Gina replies, checking her reflection on her screen in lieu of making eye contact. "Rosa told me you said Jake was acting shady-shady re: a certain Starbucks date at the Woolworth building last week, so I nabbed footage from that _locale_.  Turns out his mystery gal-pal was Bianca G., girlfriend-slash-personal-masseuse of Freddy Maliardi, a position which I do not envy."

Rosa sighs.  "Freddy Maliardi, that was one of Ianucci's informants.  What do you want to bet Bianca is in on the details, too?"

"Maybe not intentionally," Amy says, processing the information.  "But if Freddy knew where the Ianuccis were keeping their data, and he told Bianca, and Bianca told Jake..."

"Bravo, ladies," Wuntch interjects dryly, sidling up to the open doorway next to Gina. “You cracked the code to a question nobody asked.”

“Technically, I asked the question,” Amy interrupts against the little voice in her head’s better judgment. “Before all of… this.” She gestures at the files spread out on the table before her.

Wuntch glares at Amy before her expression relaxes, only marginally. “I see. Then this got us from Point A to Point B. Excellent work, Agent Santiago.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“But starting now you’re on leave.”

“Excuse me?” Amy should not be surprised, for obvious reasons.  She's more indignant, really, than surprised, it's just that shock registers more in her voice, that's all.  Amy realizes she can stop rambling since she hasn't actually said anything out loud. **  
**

"Take some time off," Wuntch says, staring her down with beady eyes. "I don't want you on desk duty, I don't want you hiding out in the backroom reorganizing the files again. I want you out of here, preferably in a designated safe house of your choosing. Might be a good time to start organizing things in case you need to go into deeper hiding.Tomorrow I’ll be organizing a more specialized task force to scope out Peralta and confirm that he’s working for… that OVT _demon_.” Wuntch takes a moment to stare angrily into the middle-distance before turning back to Amy and Rosa. “Diaz, I’d like you to be in charge.”

“I’m in,” Rosa replies immediately. Amy’s a bit taken aback; she’s surprised by how much it hurts. It feels like Rosa is leaving her behind, like she’s been waiting for this opportunity to strike. Amy doesn’t blame her for working that upward mobility game; she’s just maybe a little upset it’s coming at the extent of _her_ and her marriage.

Wuntch nods. "All right. I think that's enough excitement for one day. You two, get out of here, get some rest." Turning on her heel, she adds, "You, Ms. Linetti, I need to have a _chat_ with yet."

 **"** Gina, wait," Amy calls. She wants to ask the hacker if she knew about Jake, if  _she_ was doing OK, if she had lied about not calling him just now, but Amy isn't fast enough. Gina is already being escorted away by Wuntch, their boss clutching Gina's elbow in a death grip. Amy wants to feel worse about it than she does.

"Hey."

Amy turns to look at Rosa, waiting for her partner to finish her thought. Rosa squirms in her seat and stares back, unblinking. Oh. Apparently that was the extent of it.

"Hey," Amy says back.  Better than silence, anyway.

Rosa drums her fingers on the tabletop, gazing down at her hands before stopping abruptly and turning to face Amy.  "You know, if you need a place to stay tonight, my apartment isn't that far from here."

"Oh no."  Amy didn't know that.  Amy didn't know anything about Rosa; that was just how her partner rolled, and it was cool.  Rosa has never offered before.  Amy never needed a place to crash before, not when she had the world's most patient and loving husband waiting for her at home.

But now... now...

"Are you gonna cry?" Rosa's still staring at Amy, but she looks a little blurrier than before.

"No," says Amy, her voice thick with tears. It sounds gross, making her feel even worse than before, and somehow _that's_ enough to push her over the edge into actual crying.

God, she's straight up  _blubbering_ , and it's  _so gross,_ but Amy can't stop. She had been so great at holding it together up to that point, and she definitely isn't proud of this, but damn does it feel good to let some of stress bubble over, regardless of how uncomfortable it's making Rosa.

The woman in question silently pulls a wadded-up Kleenex out of her jacket pocket and clears her throat before waving the tissue in Amy's face. Amy takes it with a watery "thanks," without looking up. The thing looks unused, just wrinkly, so she uses it to wipe some of the tears off her face before blowing her nose.

"I'm upset too," Rosa says stonily. Amy's still too downcast to look anywhere except her lap, but she knows Rosa's actually angry, not just acting for Amy's benefit. She never acts just for Amy's benefit, at least not before this. 

"Jake was a good guy," Rosa went on. "He seemed like a nice guy. He was cool, too. He wasn’t intimidated by us - by _me_ - but he wasn’t overly macho to compensate for it." She taps her nails on the fake wood table, contemplating something before blowing out a stream of air. "I liked him. I took the lead on this task force because I guess in a smaller way I felt betrayed too."

"Plus," Rosa adds, making sure she has Amy's full attention before continuing, "he hurt my partner."

“Thanks,” Amy says, blowing her nose again before straightening up, “for that. Really. And for the offer, but I have somewhere else to go.”

She pretends she doesn’t notice Rosa visibly relax at that.


	3. AMY SANTIAGO’S SECRET APARTMENT, 9:46 PM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which Amy plots her next move and someone else takes a shot at keeping her otherwise occupied)

Amy isn't proud of it, but she's been secretly leasing her old apartment for five years now. It's under an assumed name, naturally - May Sanchez, not her most original alias, but she never forgets it - and rent comes solely from The Agency since she could use it as a tax write-off if any of this were legal, but still. It's one more massive thing she hid from Jake.

It has its uses, though. She can get patched up there when she gets massively hurt and doesn't want Jake to see or worry. The place has been used as a safe house for other agents in danger, or for people they've needed to protect in the past. One time one of her neighbors - an elderly librarian with grown kids in Pennsylvania - noticed Jake had stopped coming to the apartment with her, assumed they had broken up, and delivered Amy pity casseroles for month. Amy had taken them home to her husband and passed them off as her own (what? They were perfectly good casseroles, better than anything Amy could bake).

Maybe best of all, the apartment had been comfortable.

Amy sighs, leaning against the doorframe to look in on the living room. She folds her arms over her stomach, now full of Polish food but still turning due to the day's events. She had stayed here once or twice (or, okay, maybe a few more times than that) when Jake had been out of town and she didn't want to be in their big house all alone, when she hadn't wanted to roll over in the middle of the night to a half-empty bed. She misses Jake now more than ever.

Amy is low enough to admit she has maybe - MAYBE - in the past had a fantasy or two about bringing Jake here after her cover was blown for one reason or another.  In her imagination he was always shocked but appreciative, awed even, and immediately forgave her.

Now that Amy is on the other side of a secret identity being revealed, she isn’t so sure he'd like it that much.  She certainly isn't enjoying it.

But it's only for one night, Amy reasons, until she decides what she's going to do about the devil in plain sight. **  
**

Amy feels her home cell phone vibrating in her pocket.  Reluctantly, she pulls it out.  Seeing the name and photo on the caller ID is like jumping into a frozen lake.

 _Speak of the devil and he doth appear_ , Amy hears her high school English teacher's voice intone in her head.

Amy is used to relying on her instincts, trusting that subconsciously she knows how to handle herself in sticky situations.  Apparently the best, most natural response to this disturbance is to fling her phone across the apartment into the kitchen.  It rings four more times before stopping, and then... _pling!_   Voicemail.  Amy Santos has one new voicemail.

She stands in the middle of the living room, looking around for something to protect herself with before remembering it's just a phone.  Jake isn't going to jump out at her through the speaker. Everything may have changed for Amy, but maybe...

Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe it _wasn't_ Jake at the scene, or maybe it was but he didn't see Amy and Rosa. Maybe he has a funny story about work (oh God, what does she even know about his work anymore?), or maybe he's at home making dinner and wanting to know if she ate already. Maybe things can stay the same, just for another five minutes.

Amy keeps hoping as she retrieves her phone and logs in to her account, already preparing to overanalyze what's waiting in her inbox.

"Hey, Amy" - _Amy, not "Ames" or "Amy My Lady" or any other obnoxious pet name she's grown accustomed to, just Amy, and he sounds tired, oh God_ \- "it's me, just calling to see how _work_ is going. I, um... you usually call or text if they're keeping you late... babe." He laughs nervously, as he too just noticed how forced the nickname sounded, tacked on to the thread of a serious concern.  "Sorry" - _sorry? Since when is Jake_ sorry _for bothering her; what universe is this?_ \- "long day here too, on my end... ummmmm, so yeah, that's what's up. Here. Where I'm at. So holla back. OK, bye."

Amy hangs up, heart sinking. She wishes it were 16 hours earlier, when she was waking up to a face full of curly hair and Jake’s sleep-warm arm draped across her waist. God, she even misses the way he drools a little in his sleep, not enough for her to really complain about but enough to be noticeable on his pillowcase the next day.

Maybe their marriage was a little too idyllic. Sure, they fought a fair amount, normal marriage bickering about who was paying which bills and who was making the bed or cleaning the gutters that weekend, but they never went to bed angry, not once.  Something that awesome was bound by, like, fate or physics to end catastrophically. This newfound distance between them blows.

It's too soon for Amy to be angry at Jake. She's gotta power through this sadness, taking some time to wallow before she honestly can confront him. She considers shutting off her home phone for good, for waiting until morning light and Rosa's promised update to make an educated, rational decision.

Instead she takes the coward's route, waiting until she's 99% sure Jake is taking a pre-bed shower to call him back and leave a message.

"Hey Jake, sorry I missed your call," Amy starts, and she means it. She sounds fake as hell, but she means it, or at least she really, really wants to. "This is going to sound super lame, but I have a seminar this weekend that I totally forgot about. I need it to renew my temp agency license." She winces internally, wondering if that's even a thing before barreling on. "I'm gonna be gone all weekend - it's in... Pittsburgh - but I promise I'll be back Sunday night in time for dinner."  It's stilted as hell, but hey, they have that in common. Soulmates. Yay.  "Love you, hope you're having a good night!"

Amy groans as soon as she hangs up, sliding down the wall to sit on the linoleum floor. Why had she offered to meet at the house one-on-one? It wasn't a plan, and if it was, it was a stupid one. Now she's going to get trapped there, alone with Jake and their seventy-thousand steak knives. (She had _known_ three summers ago when they hosted that dumb barbecue that buying knives for all their guests seemed ridiculous, but she had only been mildly concerned at the time, and more about Jake accidentally slicing off someone's fingers while showing off the new cutlery.) She should have done it in public. There was still time this weekend, she reasoned, to change their plans once she got her wits back together.

Still, Amy thought, knocking her head against the cabinets, Jake could be more ruthless than she previously imagined. He wouldn’t hurt a civilian, would he? They're a nebulous group, but based on what Amy knows of OVT, he might. There might not have been anything official linking them to that bombing in Times Square four months ago, but based on her boss's reaction, Amy has reason to believe something important slipped under the radar.

Maybe she has a secret, heretofore unknown death wish, but maybe, Amy thought, it was best to put herself in danger as a trial run. She'll try to tell Rosa or Gina to keep tabs on her that night, but she isn't sure she wants either woman to know exactly what she has planned for Sunday. Now that she thinks about it, Amy actually does want a chance to confront Jake one-on-one before the Wuntch ladies intervene. She wants to talk to Jake as herself, to let some of the façade bleed away and to ask him what of his was a lie before the proper authorities force him into hiding or holding (depending on Jake _Peralta_ 's true colors).

Standing with newfound resolution, Amy turns off her home cell phone and places both it and work cell phone on the kitchen counter by the sink before heading in to the bedroom.  Sleep won't come, she already knows. She has a few hours ahead of staring at the white, dappled ceiling letting a thousand possibilities, a million worst scenarios run through her mind. Worst of all, her Real Amy / Fake Amy notebook is still at home behind the washing machine. Then again...

Amy fishes around under the bed, hoping her hunch that there's a spare notebook still hidden around here somewhere will pay off.  It does; Amy crows as she pulls a yellow legal pad free from a lot of dust bunnies, already locating a black ballpoint pen in her bedside table. She starts a new list of tells, of flaws from over the years and suspicions that she (against her better judgment) shrugged off over time. She wants something to do to keep her mind off Jake, but this seems maybe worse, like a fixation.

Still, she tells herself it's work, it's research, it's something useful instead of a spy going crazy over missing her perfect husband.

 

*****

 

"Hey, Amy, it's Jake... again. Sorry I missed you last night, call me back when you can. Love you."

 

"Whazzuuuup? It's Jake, again. Obvi. Are you okay, because it isn't like you to forget to mention a conference out of state? Like that time you were gone for three days and you left me organized notes for each--"

 

_Think your voicemail cut me off text me back when you get this :D_

 

_Amy_

_Amy_

_Aaaaaaaaaamy_

 

"Yo yo yo!"

 

"I... don't really know where I was going with that last one either. But! Give me a call back and I might have something insanely clever to finish that thought up with by then!"

 

_if you odn't text back in the next thirty minutes I'm deleting House Hunters from the DVR_

 

_unrrelated question - how do you deleate programs from the DVR_

 

"So I guess we're really doing this now. Whaaaaat? Whatever, I hope you're having 'fun' at this 'conference,' call me when you get a free moment, love you, bye."

 

_Is the milk in here expire soon_

_I'm going groceries u need anything_

_Whose voicemail still has a time limit BTW_

 

_I FIGURED OUT THE DVR mwhahahaha_

_I'm three episodes behind? apparantly?_

_didn't delete those yet but YEAH consider it gone as soon as i catch up_

 

"AMY PICK UP THE PHONE."

 

"... Okay, that last one was rude. _Please_ pick up the phone, Ames."

 

*****

 

Clearly, Amy thinks, more amused than annoyed, she isn't the only one going crazy. Jake has been calling and texting her non-stop since she went off the grid Thursday evening. It's terrifying, and a little cute, she thinks. It's probably terrifying that she thinks it's cute. She's been going through her inbox for the past twenty minutes, sitting cross-legged on her kitchen counter while eating cereal for supper on Saturday night.

It's weird to catalog all Jake's offerings, Amy thinks. She taps her pen against her legal pad next to the rough sketch of a diagram. It had started as a chart to track to progress of Jake's messages in relation to the stages of grief (Denial is, unsurprisingly, a key feature in most of Jake's chipper ramblings). Amy crumbled a bit halfway through, when Jake's messages stopped being glib and started sounding tired. She broke him somewhere along the way, his messages terse and to the point. _Amy. Please. Talk to me._ It hurt, and it took every ounce of her immense willpower not to call Jake back just yet.

The final few messages have Jake returning to form, but sounding brittle, a special kind of fake happy Amy has only seen from him a few times in their marriage, and never once directed at her. If he hadn't figured out her double life before then, he certainly had it figured out now.

Still rattled a bit by Jake's bad acting, his false reassurances that he understood how busy Amy was and _oh of course_ he will be waiting Sunday night to see her like a true gentleman, Amy tosses her notepad to the floor. She failed to file the last three or four messages into any meaningful category. Now she would have to listen to all the messages again later.

Amy sighs, wandering into the living room. The radio silence from HQ hadn't been reassuring, although with Rosa leading the charge Amy guessed silence was the best option. A call from Rosa could only mean bad things at this point, unless it came on her 'home' phone. Amy thought about calling Rosa for personal reasons, just to have someone to talk to about the situation, but she thought maybe it was too early to play that card. God knows Rosa wouldn't appreciate her whining about her personal life twice in 72 hours.

Amy had, out of desperation, tried calling Gina a few times. Her calls had gone unanswered, and Amy decided to cut her losses, assuming the other woman's older loyalties to Jake won out. Amy wouldn't blame her.

Polishing off her 'meal,' Amy paces back to the kitchen. She's rinsing out the bowl when something out the window to her left catches her eye. A glint? That doesn't seem right. There's a lot of metal around out there for the setting sunlight to reflect off. Something seems off, though, something perceptible. Whatever it is, it's instinctive. Amy actually looks out the window, and it saves her life.

Amy ducks down under the sink as the first hail of bullets whizzes through her apartment.

It isn't safe here, Amy thinks. The kitchen-slash-living room is the most open part of her home, and if she makes the slightest of movements toward the 'front' door, she'll be spotted and shot. She doesn't have a lot of other options at the moment, though.

Amy sticks her head around the corner to see her floral couch getting shredded in the living room. Her decorative tray of spoons falls off the wall with a clang or two, bullets ricocheting off the tiny metal silverware.

"Fuck," says Amy. "What the actual fuck."

Fortunately, the rest of Amy's brain decides it's firefight or flight. Keeping the back of her head covered at all times, Amy crawls to her purse, which had fallen to the floor in the initial barrage, and retrieves her gun. It isn't going to do shit against a professional rifle, probably doesn't have the range to even cross the street, but she means business. _Whoever_ this is (and Amy bats away the freezing fear growing in her gut at the thoughts forming without her consent), they have to know she won't go without a fight.

There's a pause in the action, the sniper apparently rolling old school and running out of ammo. It's enough for Amy to reconfigure, to safely move about. She finds a good position while seated on the floor amidst the debris, and _looks_. The angle of the shots is more straight-on than from above, leading her to believe the shooter isn't on the roof. The building across the street is a skyscraper of offices (and oh God, she's going to get in so much trouble if she gets a paper pusher in the crossfire), not apartments like her building. The sniper probably isn't on her level, but damn near close. And if they're _inside_ the building...

Amy sees an open window two floors up and one room over from her apartment, and she's _knows_ it's _him_. It _has to be him_.

She pokes her head up out of the dust. Nothing happens. Amy crawls back up onto the counter, nearly getting her whole upper body out her own open window (or, well, the hole kind of near where it used to be. Approximately. She doesn't want any more glass breaking in her face) and aims.

Amy gets two shots off before the sniper resumes his mission, pummeling her building once more. Amy dives back into the house, all the way to the far side of the kitchen by the fridge. She fights the logical urge to crawl for her bedroom, for a closet or some other windowless space. If she holes up in there and the sniper or someone who's helping _him_ comes looking in the aftermath, she's a sitting duck.

Amy swallows hard as the bullets continue to stream through her walls. Someone on the street below screams bloody murder, and Amy swears she can kind of already hear sirens.

She's going to survive this. She's going to stay in the kitchen with her phones and guns, and she's going to grab everything then get out of here before _they_ can get to her.

The shooting finally, blessedly, peters out, leaving Amy alone in the wreckage. Amy looks at the clock on her microwave for a sense of time, then realizes she didn't check it before this all started and thus doesn't actually know how much time passed. Watching it now, she waits five solid minutes before deciding she's in the clear.

Amy can't stop shaking, reaching blindly for something to grab onto. She manages to pull herself up off the floor, joints crackling in the process, by using what's left of the kitchen sink for leverage. Amy takes a second to assess her cut-up hands, her wedding and engagement rings slightly streaked with her own blood. She can feel _so many things_ under her skin, like she has full-body splinters.

She's still in such a state of shock that when one of her phones rings, Amy answers it.

"Heyyy babe." Jake sounds so smug it makes Amy want to vomit. "How's it going?"

"Umm..." Amy short-circuits, just for a moment before remembering 'herself.' "It's, ugh, it's long. Long day, you know? Sorry I forgot to call, too.  Too many meetings, my mind is like  _shot_ at this point."

Jake hums sympathetically. "Aw man, that _sucks_."

"Uh- _huh._ " Amy hisses as she pulls a piece of glass from her forearm. "It _sure_ does."

"Yeah, I bet," Jake adds, as if he really cares about her wellbeing. "We're still on for tomorrow night, though, right? You'll be all rested up by then?"

Amy scowls down at the phone. "Why? Do you having something _else_ special planned for the evening's activities?"

"For you, dearest _Santiago_? Always." She can practically hear Jake's smirk. "Let's just say I think _you_ are going to have a blast."

"Talk like that, and you had better deliver, _Peralta,_ " Amy retorts. "I expect I won't be the only one _blown away_ though."

" _Blowing_ , nice," Jake crows. "Vaguely threatening, don't care, still turned on. ...Okay, this is _way more_ exciting than I anticipated." Amy can practically hear the giddy fist pump she knows accompanied that phrase. "What happens next?"

"Are you almost finished?" Amy sighs, head thumping back against what's left of the wall.

"It's just like phone sex for realz," Jake whispers. Reverting to his normal tone, he adds, "Although I did kind of feel like we were just getting warmed up."

"Really? Because I feel like we've done enough _banging_ for one night," Amy replies. Jake doesn't seem to understand the barb, based on the uncomfortable silence that follows.  "I mean metaphorically. Metaphorically-speaking. I can't... mouth right now."

"Woo, save some of that for the bedroom, Ames," Jake mocks. "Welp, since this foreplay seems to have done the trick, I shall bid you a _good-a noche_ , until tomorrow." There's an awkward pause, Amy unsure of what (if anything) to say, but then Jake is back to babbling. "'Kay, love you, byyyez!"

Amy glowers at the receiver, call ended before she could have her say. She almost calls Jake back, but she can't come up with a retort off the top of her head to justify such an action. Instead she punches in a different number.

“It is _on_ ,” Amy seethes as soon as Rosa picks up. “It is on like Donkey Kong!”

There’s a long enough pause for Amy to wonder if Rosa is still mostly asleep, then – “That really what you wanted to say?”

“Shut up,” Amy retorts, picking her way across a floor full of glass shards and splintered furniture. “I need a place to crash tonight.” She snags her purse and jacket, slipping out of the building to the distant sounds of Rosa reluctantly agreeing and her neighbors shuffling out into the hall to see what just happened to what once was her home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next – Jake finally comes out to play! Noice.


	4. PELTZ-SANTOS RESIDENCE, 7:23 PM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which we finally get to the confrontation I put in the fucking description)

“Honey, I’m home!”

Amy frowns. Something is off, something surprisingly unrelated to the manslaughter her husband attempted last night. Something in his voice Amy recognizes as his usual “I know something you don’t know” tone, but it lacks his usual sing-song-y good humor.

“I’m in the kitchen!” Amy yells back, shaking her head to clear it. She gives the cranberry walnut salad one final toss before setting the bowl back on the counter.

Jake ambles into the room, stopping in the entryway as she pours two glasses of Merlot. "Huh," he mutters, "you actually made dinner." From the corner of her eye, Amy watches him; Jake’s expression remains neutral but his eyes dart from the knife block to the hanging pans to the stovetop, cataloguing everything in the room that could be used in a fight.

She’d be impressed if she weren’t so angry.

Instead, Amy plasters on her fakest grin and turns to greet her ‘husband.’ Jake gives her a weak smile in return before he notices her dress and his eyes nearly bug out of his head.

Despite disagreements from Gina and Rosa, Amy wouldn’t consider herself a slouch in the wardrobe department. She likes nice, practical things. This little black dress, for example. Simple cut, simple color. Tight enough to flaunt it, but flow-y enough to kick ass in. It’s probably the nicest dress she owns; she figures, for all their petty squabbles over the years, Jake deserves to see her in it one last time. No matter how this confrontation shakes out, it’s the last he’s going to see of her being nice for a _long_ time.

Apparently Jake is on the same wavelength. She stops short, brain fizzling a bit at the sight of Jake in his best black suit. She isn't sure she's seen him wear it since their last anniversary, but it fits as smartly as ever. It even looks like he got a haircut, the bastard. Amy also notes the distinct lack of a tie and his double-knotted running shoes instead of some snazzier footwear. Clever as ever, that Jake.

“Darling,” Amy purrs, deciding she might as well have fun with the act – that’s basically all both of them have been doing for the past five years. “Don’t just stand there.” She plucks both wine glasses off the counter and extends one to Jake. “Tell me about your day.”

Jake takes it tentatively, their fingers barely brushing.

“Oh boy,” he says, swirling the liquid and peering down at it suspiciously, “wine on a work night.”

Amy hadn’t poisoned it, but now she kind of wishes she had.

It was never this weird, she thinks, even when they were dating. It never felt like they had walls up before, back when it was mostly pretend. Now they’re acting like strangers. Jake seems shy, hesitant, which he never used to be. If she had met this Jake all those years ago at Gina’s birthday party, how differently would things have turned out? Would Amy have found him equally interesting, or would she have passed him by?

With the hand that isn’t holding his wine, Jake starts to reach behind his back, brushing up and under the edge of his jacket.

Amy panics. Without thinking, she sets her glass down on the counter, grabs a knife and tackles him. It’s stupid, so _incredibly_ stupid, and if her cover wasn’t already blown, it sure as hell is now.

The gun clattering out of Jake’s hand and across the tiled floor justifies her instincts.

“I knew it,” Jake hisses, her blade nicking his Adam’s apple at the movement. “All these years you’ve had an elaborate plot to kill me, working the long game with your kicking me ‘in your sleep’ and ‘accidentally’ using the fabric softener that gives me hives.” He moves to make accompanying air quotes but Amy jams her elbows into the insides of his arms, pinning them down. “What else did I miss, huh? You try smothering me with a pillow when I was sick? Put arsenic in my mashed potatoes?” Jake gasps dramatically at his own hypothesizing. “That roast last Thursday should have been my tip-off. I should have realized then you were done waiting for me to get wise.”

Amy’s face falls, but she keeps the knife pressed heavily against his throat. “What? You sound ridiculous, and FYI, I worked really hard on that pot roast.”

“Yeah, about forty-five minutes too hard. That meat was so dry, I– _ack_ , not the face! Not my face!” Jake shrieks as Amy slashes his left cheek.

She cuts him deeper than she intended and finds herself momentarily shocked by the amount of blood that comes gushing from the wound. Jake uses the split-second she’s startled to his advantage, pushing her off and onto the floor before darting across the front hall and into the living room.   Amy is on her feet in a flash; forgetting her knives, she instead pulls off her heels and chucks one at Jake’s retreating back. It nails him between the shoulder blades as he rounds the corner with a soft “oof!”

“What the hell, Jake? I give you a glass of wine and your reaction is to pull a gun on me?” Amy skitters into the half-bath hidden under the staircase. She's long since known Jake is a snoop, but even he isn't nosy enough to touch her stash of tampons and feminine hygiene products. Amy has been exploiting this hiding place her entire life. She quickly pulls out a cadre of throwing knives and belts them around her thigh, then grabs the spare magazines from the bottoms of the boxes before darting back into the hallway.

“Several guns!” Jake corrects her, voice muffled by distance from across the house. Amy hears what sounds like _his_ spare magazines hitting the floor and then a weird scraping noise that does not bode well for her. “And that wine was poisoned! Probably.”

“So what, you were going to shoot the poison out of it?” Amy fires back. She pulls her purse off the table, grabbing and loading her gun. She also takes the opportunity to sift her Swiss Army knife and pepper spray to the top of the heap, just in case she has to improvise.

Jake's exasperated sigh echoes around the house. " _No_ , I was going to shoot the glass out of your hand into the sink and it would have been really awesome.”

Amy rolls her eyes. Really, she should expect such logic from the guy who shot up her apartment before calling to ‘warn’ her.

“Why would I poison my own glass?” Amy retorts. “And don’t cite _The Princess Bride_  in your argument! I was never going to let you trade wines.”

“A _ha_!” Jake shouts back. “You just made my case for me!”

Amy shifts her weight from foot to foot, waiting for Jake to reappear. She did _not_ listen to "Cell Block Tango" twenty-five times today to amp herself up for nothing. She also had time to turn the house upside down in the hours before Jake arrived and did not find a single stray shell in Jake's man cave, so she doesn't know what the hell he's doing in there.

"How are you finding anything in there?" Amy shouts across the house.

"If that's a dig on my cleaning habits, now is not the time, babe," Jake bellows back. She doesn't hear his shoes - probably muffled by the carpet - but Amy swears his voice sounds closer.

She raises her gun, arm muscles tensing. "Can you even make that shot?" Amy asks before she can stop herself.

There's another beat of silence and Jake not reappearing in the doorway. "Can I _what_?"

Amy knows, OK? She realizes how good his aim has been in the last ten minutes alone, how lethal his work for OVT was, but she can't stop. She has to ask. "Can you shoot a glass out of someone's hands without clipping them?"

There's a shuffling, rustling sound. Before Amy can react, her right bicep is on fire and the mirror hanging on the wall shatters.

Amy leaps out of the path the cascading glass takes, not turning her back on the still-empty living room entryway.

"Did I hit the center?" Jake calls from somewhere around the corner. "Tell me it at least looked cool!"

He did hit dead center on the mirror, Amy notes absently, before looking down at her arm. A little blood, but not much, and it's shallow enough that the blood seems to be clotting already. Still. Jake grazed her doing a trick shot. _Bastard_.

Covering the wound with her left hand, Amy ducks and runs back into the kitchen. Curse her competitive nature.

“As you now know, judging from you stunned silence, uh, hell yeah I can make that shot," Jake crows as he stalks into the hall, sneakers squeaking annoyingly. "I'm _great_  with guns. I’m gonna make such a great dad.”

"I’m not touching that," Amy snaps from behind the kitchen island. She uses the reflection off the pans hanging over the stove to fire a shot backwards over the center counter. Jake dodges it by a hair, accidentally banging into the doorframe in the process. **  
**

" _I'm Not Touching That_ , title of your -- "

" _Not now_ ," Amy snarls, jumping up to face him. " _And_ you clipped me, so your point remains unproven." She shoots twice, aiming for Jake's thick skull. He dives and does a roll, moving fluidly to kneel with his gun raised. It's kinda hot, actually.

Jake shrugs. "If at first you don't succeed..."

Amy darts into the dining room before Jake can fire. She makes a circle through the study back into the living room, hoping to sneak up behind Jake, but he's waiting by the front window, backlit by moonlight and cutting off her path.

"It's all making so much sense now." Jake pushes away from the obnoxiously large grandfather clock he claims his actual grandfather made, swaggering toward Amy. He's good at theatrics, she'll give him that. "All the lies I should have seen through." Jake scoffs. "It's so obvious now. I mean, Tupperware parties? How could I have been so blind. Who goes to Tupperware parties these days."

Amy waits for him to take one step closer before pulling out a knife.

"I do," she says, jamming the blade into Jake's left thigh, and she means it. "Organization is important, especially in the kitchen."

Jake doubles over but doesn't fall. Amy almost closes the gap to catch him before deciding to make him dance a while longer.

"And speaking of obvious lies," Amy continues, "what kind of married man not only offers to but regularly _does_ his own laundry?"

Jake hisses in pain but staggers forward, gripping the handle of the knife experimentally before deciding to leave it be. "A caring, considerate one who thinks his wife already has enough to deal with in a day," he retorts. "Also one who sometimes forgets he has USB drives with sensitive information on them in his pockets."

He lurches forward, within arms reach. Amy kicks him in the ribs instead, only slightly terrified when he still refuses to lose his footing.

Jake grunts. “I should _not_ be so turned on right now, but I totally am.”

Amy lifts her leg to kick him again, but Jake anticipates it. He catches her foot and twists it hard enough for her ankle to audibly _pop_.

“OW!” Amy shrieks.

Jake releases her immediately. “Ooh, sorry, babe, you okay? … oh, right.” He raises his gun and mimes shooting himself in the head with a grin. “Oy. Long day.” He shifts his stance dangerously fast and once again he’s aiming at Amy.

Amy maintains her posture, straightening up to shoot over Jake's shoulder. She pointedly empties her magazine into the ugly clock, blasting it to smithereens. Jake turns to watch in horror as woodchips fly.

"What the _hell_..." He turns to Amy with a horrified expression. Amy responds by chucking her now-empty gun at his face. It _bonks_ off his head as she books it for the dining room.

"Oh, _not cool, Ames_ ," Jake thunders. Amy hears bullets being fired and a smattering of soft _chunks_ , like they're coming to rest in the drywall. Better than in her skull, Amy decides as she pulls to a stop beside the open entryway. A few seconds later Jake sprints in, running right past her toward the kitchen. He slows when he notices the room is empty.

Amy frees another knife from her belt and lets it fly past his head. Jake jumps as it whizzes by, landing in the sink with a bright clatter. He turns to face her. Mistake.

"You're such a snake, Jake!" Amy shouts, releasing another blade. Its trajectory is off, not even close enough to knick him, but it has Jake clambering for cover all the same. He winds up behind the island, between it and the sink in the same position Amy was earlier.

"Yeah, well it takes one to know one, Amy" Jake replies, " _if that is your real name!"_ She sees his hand before he leans around the barrier to shoot. Amy keeps moving to her left, content to take a minute just to bait him. Jake tries to follow, craning around the island until his entire upper body is exposed. Amy laughs and fakes throwing another knife. Jake finally realizes his error and dives for cover.

"You," Jake shouts once he's back in hiding, "are such a snake in the grass that your initials spell 'asp.'"

Amy laughs again. "Took you long enough to get."

"I didn’t," Jake admits over what Amy knows is the click and clack of him reloading his gun. "Terry had to point it out."

" _Terry?"_ Of course Jake’s one sweet, well-adjusted adult friend was no ordinary gym buddy but a ruthless assassin, no doubt suplexing his way through enemy agents. "I _knew_ you didn’t go to the gym," is somehow the first thought she winds up verbalizing.

"What? I do!" Jake protests, finally standing up and re-entering her line of sight. "Not as often as Terry, but still!"

As soon as Jake pulls the trigger, Amy ducks and rushes forward. The dining room window shatters behind her. She just has to stay low enough and get close enough to move around the side of the island, Amy thinks. She slinks to her left, turning to see the full extent of damage Jake did to the dining room. All in all, it's not _bad_. Yeah, everything's covered in glass, and maybe one or two chairs will need new backs. They don't use the room too often, though.

To her right, Jake takes a few steps back, away from the island. He stopped firing as soon as she left his field of vision, but it doesn't seem like he's about to charge off looking for her. Weird.

Amy bounds forward to her feet and grabs the nearest pan off the rack above the stove.

The clatter surprises Jake, who turns and fires off two rounds. Amy raises what she now sees is their largest frying pan and deflects the bullets with practiced ease.

" _What the hell kind of frying pan deflects bullets?_ " Jake shrieks, sounding personally offended.

"I don't know, it was a wedding present," Amy answers, knowing full well it was from one of her brothers. "Which you would know if you had helped me write the Thank You notes!"

Jake huffs. "I _tried_ to," he argues, "but you kept complaining about my handwriting, or not folding the paper correctly, or using too much saliva on the envelopes."

Amy points the frying pan at him, leaning over the island to get up in his face. "The envelopes aren't the only thing you use too much saliva on."

Jake's expression turns thunderous. His whole body seems to puff up, growing with rage. With his right hand, he reaches forward and _slaps_ the frying pan out of Amy's grip. It clangs to the floor, skittering into the dining room. The two of them stare at each other in shock for a minute before Jake bolts toward the living room. Amy rushes back to the dining room and into the study, cutting Jake off at the room's other entrance.

Jake balls up his fists and growls, the noise rising high in pitch and stopping short. " _CURSE THIS SEMI-OPEN FLOOR PLAN_!" he howls before running back the way he came. Amy doesn't bother moving, maintaining position to shoot at Jake when he appears to her right in the dining room entryway.

"G- " Jake chokes back another frustrated vocalization. He pulls the trigger of his gun, but nothing happens. "Damnit."

Amy slams the dividing doors in his face. The fancy French doors never served much purpose before, Jake always leaving the room open to the rest of the house, as if he had nothing to hide. Amy curses herself in hindsight.

Whatever. She missed it earlier, but Amy won't miss his stash this time. Whatever ammo Jake has hidden in here is as good as hers now.

The sound of knuckles rapping on glass chimes throughout the room. Amy glances over her shoulder. Jake grimaces at her through the pane. Amy screws up her own face in response and sets to upending the top right drawer in Jake's desk.

Jake huffs and makes a show of putting his hands on his hips. "Of course I fell for the mysterious, sexy bad girl," he berates himself.

Amy stops, standing to better glare at him through the door. Talk about cutting deep. "I’m not a bad girl!" she protests. "Frankly, I’m offended you think I that."

"You are throwing _knives_ at me," Jakes argues, gesturing wildly between the singular blade still strapped to Amy's thigh and its twin still lodged in his left leg. "And no offense but full offense, you and your Agency have been responsible for a lot of crap the guys and I have had to clean up over the years."

Amy's face crinkles in confusion, her quest momentarily forgotten. "What?"

Jake opens the door. The look on his face as he properly enters the room isn't one Amy has ever seen before, a controlled fury. Jake's looking at her in anger. Amy is sure of it, and all at once she feels like throwing up.

"C'mon, Amy," Jake says, voice low and measured. "I know your #1 Ladies Detective Agency isn't the easiest to find information on, but there's enough information out there to find a trail. Witness protection identities being leaked. Top-secret blueprints that turns up on the black market. That quote-unquote 'terrorist attack' in Times Square four months ago that no one seems to want to talk about. We know it's you guys. And I can't... I can't believe..."

He blinks a couple times, seeming to cool off before suddenly snarling again. "But whatever, as long as you can wash your hands of it at the end of the day. You and your super-secret superspy boyfriend probably laugh about it all the time when you met up for weekly mimosas and sex time in SoHo."

"My what?" says Amy. She missed something, she thinks.

Jake throws his arms out to the side. "I don't know, why wouldn't you have a secret boyfriend who knows you're a spy and also six types of martial arts and how to steam vegetables to the best degree? You're amazing and perfect and nobody loves me!"

Amy sighs. "Jake, we've been working on this..." She stops when she notices he's still shuffling every so slightly around the desk between them. "Wait. Are you trying to distract me while you get more ammo?"

"Whaaaaat?" Jake asks, voice skyrocketing in pitch. "No, I'm just... hangin'." He leans on the desk, hitching his left leg up onto the table. The knife in his thigh jostles in the process, causing Jake to emit a muffled scream. "Just here to have a rational, adult discussion. Like we do."

Amy lunges toward him. Jake rolls backwards off the desk before she can shove him. In quick succession, she hears a thunk, a clatter, and a strangled "g _aaaack_." There's a moment of silence, Amy waiting for some kind of sign before she moves to finish him off.

"Okay," comes Jake's voice from the floor. "That got the knife out. _Whew_. Thought it might be worse."

Cautiously, Amy circles the desk. It's easy. It's going to be easy, finishing Jake off while he's on the floor and already bleeding.

Amy rounds the corner, gun at the ready. Jake is still down, working to staunch the flow of blood from his leg.

It's simple, and yet...

The sight of Jake's wedding band streaked with blood pulls up too many memories, too many emotions for Amy to compartmentalize. This isn't some rat. This is her _husband_. Her husband who she -- present-tense -- cares about very, very much.

Amy snarls in frustration.

" _My_ agency didn't do any of that," she snaps instead, looming over Jake. " _Yours_ did. I would know from all the times I've had to clean up after the mess." She plucks the gun he dropped off the floor and waves it in his face. "And don't leave your stuff lying around!" she adds before booking it into the living room.

She makes it to the front hall without any indication Jake is following her. She blindly grabs for whatever spare bullets she has in her purse, then decides to pick up her mace because why not at this point. Amy dodges into the kitchen at the sound of creaking wood, of sneakers once again squeaking on the hardwood.

She needs to plan, is all. Amy sets the guns down on the counter. Sighing heavily, she grabs her still-standing glass of wine and downs it in one gulp. She just wasn't prepared enough to kill Jake a minute ago. She just needs to strategize for a second.

"Amy, can we pau-"

Amy shrieks. Frick, he snuck up on her while she was thinking. Amy panics, pulling the trigger on the pepper spray as she whirls to face Jake.

It's Jake's turn to scream. " _Augh, it's in my eyes!_ " he wails, doubling over in pain.

Amy coughs, waving some of the mist away before tackling her husband to the floor. She straddles his waist, pinning his arms to the floor.

She just has to keep him distracted, keep him from noticing she doesn't have a plan while she still has the upper hand.

"I can't believe I was even trying to save our marriage." Amy winces as soon as the words leave her mouth. Too real, pull it back some.

Below her, Jake stops twitching. Huh. Never mind, maybe her words worked. He does his best to blink up at her in surprise, though his eyes water and his face is still pretty blotchy.

"Ames," he croaks. "Our marriage doesn't need saving."

And just like that, Amy thinks, he can devastate her. Here she was, stuck on how much she still cared about him, when it turns out Jake was never that invested. Of course he doesn't see anything worth saving. Everything was fake to him.

"I mean," Jake blurts, as if sensing how lost in thought Amy has become, "our marriage is fine. Ish. For the most part. I mean, I'm happy."

Amy scowls. "Really?" she asks darkly, pressing down on his wrists to emphasize her sarcasm.

"OK, point taken," Jake says. "But like, we’re still booked for the marriage counselor Thursday, so it’s a place to start."

Amy's brain grinds to a halt. Maybe it's the rush of wine or the rush of adrenaline or (most likely) the mace lingering in the air, but her head is starting to swim. At the same time, something familiar snaps into place.

" _This_ Thursday?" Her voice sounds small. "This coming Thursday? Four days from now Thursday?"

"Ummmmm, yes?"

Amy doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. The noise she makes is somehow an excellent blend of the two. She raises her arms uselessly, resting them on the top of her head just to be moving. The gunshot wound on her right arm twinges in protest.

"What, what's wrong?" The concern is evident in Jake's voice. At least she thinks it's concern. For all Amy knows, he could still be acting.

"Jake," Amy says, lowering her hands to cover her face. "Jake, our counseling session was _last_ Thursday. Three days ago Thursday."

There's a lurching pause. Amy can't bring herself to take her hands away from her face and look at him.

"No it wasn't," Jake protests weakly, sounding unsure of himself.

" _Yeah_ , it was, because I was the only one who showed up," Amy replies, lowering her hands to her sides. She moves off Jake's torso gingerly, using the island to pull herself up. Jake takes the opportunity to scoot back across the kitchen floor, away from her reach. He gets up with a grunt, hefting his gun into hand but leaving it untrained. He takes a step forward, moves in close, like he wants to put his hands on her arms, like he wants to embrace. He stops himself before he can, though.

"Amy, I _swear_ I didn't know," Jake pleads. "I should have asked you, or not assumed I had the right date, but please don't think I stood you up on purpose."

“Yeah, right, sure,” Amy snarks, failing to keep the pain out of her voice. “I suppose you’re also gonna deny shooting up my old place last night.”

Jake's eyebrows skyrocket up his forehead. " _Someone was shooting at you?_ "

Again, Amy gestures at Jake in disbelief. To his credit, Jake seems to remember he’s holding a gun. “Oh, right. Amy, just... listen.”

Amy grabs the gun she left laying on the kitchen counter and aims it at Jake. "To what?" she snaps before cutting herself off. What can she say, honestly? She'd be a hypocrite to call Jake on not telling the truth up to now.

“I can’t…” Jake’s arm jerks, making a reflexive defense stance with his gun before lowering it heavily. His gaze never leaves Amy’s face.

Jake stares at her for a long, long minute. Slowly, then, he bends at the knees, then at the waist. He sets his gun down on the tiled floor with a _clack_. He gives it a push, and then it’s sliding toward Amy, hitting her in the foot.

“I’m not… doing this,” says Jake. “I’m not pretending or playing at anything right now, I just…” He blinks, eyes wet but not yet tearing up. “I want you to be OK. And if you have to put a bullet between my eyes to do that, then fine.” He raises his hands, palms up and out.

“But first,” he continues, “let me say, this wasn’t a joke. This – ” He gestures around the room, toward the rest of the house “ -- wasn’t recon or a job to me. This was home. And… and I’m sorry I lied for so long and about so much. But Amy, I fell in love with you. I still love you, if that’s… on the table anymore.”

It’s sick. _He’s sick_. How can Jake still want this farce? How can Jake, despite the lies on top of lies, still want Amy, still want the little life they made together?

Amy blinks back her tears. Some of them fall anyway.

Jake’s frown deepens. “Ames?” He sounds concerned, maybe a little hopeful, a little eager to hear what she has to say, even if what she says is “no.”

Amy shakes her head and tosses her gun to the floor. It lands next to Jake’s with a _clunk_.

"Jake," she says, wiping her eyes. Once they're dry she can truly see and appreciate the hints of hope in Jake's facial expression, traces amounts building by the second. "Jake, of course I still want this. I love you."

She starts to take a step, but Jake's already there, rushing across the kitchen to pull her into his arms. His grip is kinda painful, but Amy doesn't blame him, pulling her arms free so she can wrap them around his waist. "I'm so sorry," she continues.

"Don't be," Jake murmurs into her hair. He sighs. "We both acted like idiots. Attractive, badass, superspy idiots."

Amy laughs. "How smart are we, huh?"

"So smort," Jake corrects her before drawing back. Amy doesn't let go him, but she leans back just enough to tilt her face up. Jake's lips meet hers, just like she knew they would.

It hasn't even been a week since Amy last kissed Jake, but she feels like she missed this, like they're connecting on a different level than the last five years. It starts out gentle, neither of them willing to push their newfound boundaries just yet. It isn't enough, though. Amy _knows_ Jake now, who he really is and what he really does, and she _wants_. She wants him so bad. She wants to stay like this, just the pair of them making out in their demolished kitchen, for the rest of the foreseeable future.

Amy reaches up to cup Jake's face. She _intends_  it to be tender gesture. Instead she accidentally thumbs the cut on Jake's face from when she sliced him at the start of their fight.

Jake winces, the hand he has in Amy's hair clenching and _yanking_ involuntarily. Amy gasps.

"Call it even?" Jake suggests, sounding sheepish. Amy sees it for the opportunity it is, the offer to ease back off the gas. She'd appreciate it normally, but Amy's kind of a bender tonight, she supposes. It's worth going for broke after breaking most of the contents of their home and almost losing the person she cares about most.

She's willing to pump the breaks for Jake, of course, if he really wants to cool things off for the time being. Amy's pretty sure he's on board based on whatever is currently poking her in the hip, though. (She's at least ninety-nine percent sure it _isn't_ a gun.)

"Not yet," Amy says, "but we'll get there." She grabs his face again, harder this time, and pulls Jake in for a bruising kiss. She brushes her thumb across his cheekbone to spread out the blood. Jake's grip in her hair and around her waist tighten in response, and he moans into Amy's mouth. Their hips finally meet, an accidental brush at first, then again with more purpose once Amy puts her hands on Jake's waist.

"For real though," Jake groans, pulling away for air, "you were telling the truth about _not_ being a black market business? Because this is maybe the stupidest time to be making an objection to _this_ ," he says, gesturing between their bodies, "but that's kind of a deal breaker for me."

"It isn't us, I _swear_ ," Amy promises. That seems to be enough for Jake; sweeping her hair off her shoulder, he angles her head just so and begins kissing down  her neck. Damn, he's still got Moves.

"I don't want to fight anymore," Amy adds with a moan. "I don't know who's right or wrong, but it doesn't matter. At least not tonight."

"I know, we're so bad at it," Jake jokes. "I think we spent more time talking at each other than actually doing action stuff." She can feels his grin against her collarbone.

Amy snorts. "True, but that isn't exactly what I meant." She lowers her hands to Jake's butt and squeezes. Just to emphasize her point, she tells herself.

"Right!" Jake straightens up, getting momentarily distracted with kissing Amy's lips, and nose, and forehead. "Right right right." They both move toward the nearest fixture, the island in the kitchen. Amy pulls Jake in for a kiss by his suit's lapels, wrapping her right leg around his waist so she can hop up on the counter.

"Gnnnkk," says Jake at the same time Amy realizes she rested her weight on the leg she stabbed him in.

"Shit," Amy curses, pulling back.

"No no no, it's fine, just..." Jake takes a second to think about before angling his body in the opposite direction. "Put your weight on my other hip? I think."

"No, it's fine, I'll just do..." Amy protests at the same time. She backs toward the counter and puts her hands on the edge, intending to push herself up. She gets as far as the first flex when the bullet wound in her right bicep sends a stabs of pain down her arm. "Ow ow ow!" She hisses as Jake hobbles over to help her slide down.

"It's too high," she says, cringing at how put-out she sounds. "Regroup."

"Right, dining room table," Jake says, taking a step in that direction before stopping. "Oh. But there's so much glass..."

Amy surveys the scene, and yeah, it's somehow worse than she remembers. She's not going anywhere near the study. She isn't sure she wants to know what's on the floor in the kitchen anymore. "Living room?" she suggests.

"Mmmmm, maybe," Jake replies. "Not sure how I feel about doing it on the floor in there, though, with all the splintered wood."

"Why do you want to do it on the floor?" Amy asks.

"The couch sustained major damage," Jake says, avoiding eye contact.

"How, we were barely in there?" Amy says.

"I know," says Jake, "but I was so mad about the stupid clock, and it was the heat of the moment."

"Let's just... stop," says Amy. She pushes Jake back a few inches, hand flat against the center of his chest. Jake's eyes crinkle a smidge in confusion, but a soft smile returns to his lips. Amy can't resist the urge to close the gap between them, giving him a gentle peck before continuing. "We," she continues, gesturing to her busted arm, "are majorly injured."

“What, this isn’t doing it for you?” Jake asks, gesturing to the gash in his leg, still bleeding sluggishly. He gives an exaggerated thrust of his pelvis. “ _Unh_. Baby.” Whatever lewd remark he intended to start gets choked off by a whimper. “OK, yeah, I overdid it,” her husband groans, “that’s gotta get fixed first.”

"There's a fully-stocked first aid kit in the bathroom off our bedroom," Amy admits.

"There's a fully-stocked first aid kit in every bathroom," Jake corrects. Amy raises an eyebrow at him. "Oh, I noticed. Just figured it was you being paranoid. Thanks, bee-tee-double-u. Those came in handy on a-several occasions."

Amy hums in appreciation, draping her arms over Jake's shoulders again. "I maybe suggested using the first aid kit upstairs for a reason." She waggles her eyebrows in a manner she hopes is seductive. It's kind of hard to feel her face at the moment.

"Oh, I definitely gots it," says Jake, hands moving lower than her waist. "Responsibility is your turn-on."

Amy smiles, leaning forward to brush her nose against his. "You're my turn-on."

"Awww," Jake replies, actually looking touched. His expression quickly morphs into something more seductive. "Why don't I help you get those bandages and sterilizing agents, Mrs. Santiago?" Jake proposes in a tone much deeper than his natural voice before pausing. "Is it too soon to turn this into a roleplaying thing?"

"A bit too soon, yeah," says Amy.

"Okay, but later," Jake replies. He takes a step back, allowing Amy to lead the way upstairs. She feels positively giddy as they pick a path through the chaos of their home, never once letting go of her husband's hand.

 

 

**PELTZ-SANTOS RESIDENCE, 4:32 AM**

 

“You know I wasn’t shooting at you last night." Jake's voice is soft, hushed compared to the early morning chirping of birds in the backyard. It's still steady enough that Amy can tell he isn't just waking up, though. "Or not last night, the next before that." She feels him frown. "Night before last?”

"Night before last," Amy confirms with a yawn before rolling over to face her husband. “And I believe you, but if not you, then who?”

Jake’s brow furrows. “You know what tipped your hand this time? We were going for the same files. At least, I think we were. The Iannu—“

“The Iannucci files,” Amy says at the same time, nodding against his chest. She cranes her neck to look up at his face.

“You think it’s a mole of theirs?” Jake continues, reaching up to brush her hair away from her face. “Someone smart enough to play us against each other and protect their assets at the same time?”

Amy hums thoughtfully against his sleep-warmed skin. “Maybe,” she responds slowly, “but I think it would make more sense for it to be an _inside_ job. Think internally in your company.”

“Nope,” says Jake firmly.

Amy grimaces. “Jake.”

Jake sighs deeply then rubs at his eyes with his free hand. “You can _not_ tell anyone I told you this, _ever_ , but my boss is like a dad to me. I just… have a hard time believing he would set me up like this and lie about it, though he does have a flair for the dramatic. What about your boss?"

“… Eh,” says Amy. It kind of depends on the day of the week whether or not Wuntch would throw her under the bus. As much as Amy loves Rosa, her ‘friend’ did seem a tad enthusiastic when Amy told her of her plan to go in alone and “beat the shit out of” Jake the night before last. Plus Gina might turn them on each other just for fun. Amy wouldn’t put it past her. “Let’s put a pin in this discussion.”

"Mmm, 'kay," Jake mumbles before rolling onto his back and closing his eyes.

Amy waits a minute, then two. At Minute Four, she rolls her eyes, then rolls herself further onto Jake. She places a rather pointed kiss at the base of his throat, followed by a kiss over his Adam's apple and a kiss on the dimple in his chin.

"Oh... _oh_!" Jake finally re-opens his eyes.

"I mean, if you're really that tired, though..." Amy teases, placing more weigh on her knees so she can cup Jake's face with both hands.

Jake frowns, and Amy knows it's fake. She knows that expression like the back of her hand. As if he were _honestly_ weighing his options that seriously.

"Hmmm, this is all so sudden," Jake replies, the sensation of his hands running up Amy's sides at odds with his solemn tone. "I mean, we only met last night." Amy squirms as his fingers reach particularly ticklish territory. Jake smirks up from beneath her. "What did you say your name was again, Strange Lady in My Bed?"

Amy laughs and leans down to kiss him on the lips just because she can. **  
**

 

**PELTZ-SANTOS RESIDENCE, 4:55 AM**

 

“It’s killing you to think about what our house looks like downstairs right now, isn’t it?”

Amy nods against Jake's chest again. “Uh-huh.”

Jake kisses the top of her head, then sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. "Shall we then?"

 

**PELTZ-SANTOS RESIDENCE, 5:15 AM**

 

Amy slinks down the stairs, back hugging the wall to keep in the dawn-gray shadows. She hears Jake banging around in the kitchen through the wall, the plunk of bread going in the toaster and the click of the knobs on the stovetop being twisted. She also hears a concerning amount of rustling and the _ca-chunks_ of what she knows is Jake just kicking last night's detritus out of his path as he walks instead of stopping to sweep it up. Amy wonders if she should scrap her current plan in favor of grabbing a broom from the front hall. That or just jumping around the corner and scaring the bejesus out of Jake.

No, this is definitely her best plan. Not the most comfortable, but absolutely the most fun. Like a crazy, sexy, whirlwind --

"How do you want your eggs now?" Jake shouts from the other room. "I figure since the frying pan is obviously fine, and the stove works..."

"Still over hard," Amy calls back from the last step. He should know that. Or, well. Amy supposes, with everything that went down last night, some suspicion is appropriate. She'd never risk salmonella under any circumstances, though.

Amy takes a minute to appreciate the view before making her move. After a shared shower, Jake had thrown on a T-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts before heading downstairs to start working on breakfast.

Amy had waited until he was gone before putting on one of Jake's button-up shirts and not much else.

"Hello, husband," Amy purrs, moving to pose seductively in the doorway. "See anything you like?"

Jake drops an egg on the floor and doesn't seem to notice. Yeah, they're definitely gonna need a broom.

Jake gets it together, though, sauntering over to Amy with a sly smile. "Ohoho, me likey," he says, hands coming to rest on her hips. "Me likey a lot." He leans in for a kiss, and Amy obliges. She wraps her arms around his neck, drawing Jake closer and deepening the kiss. Jake leans into it, returning her affection enthusiastically.

Maybe a little too enthusiastically, Amy thinks, as he leans more of his weight against her. Amy takes a step backwards without breaking away from the kiss. Jake does it intentially this time, walking Amy back another step. Amy freezes.

"What is it?" Jake asks, pausing immediately. "What's wrong?"

Amy motions to the right with her head. "The front door is right there."

Jake turns to look, frowns, then turns back to Amy. "So, who cares?"

He leans in to kiss her again, but Amy draws back. "I just, I don't want the neighbors who are getting ready for work to see my butt, or anything."

"Aw, but it's such a good butt," says Jake. "All nice and tall."

" _Tall_?" says Amy.

"So how about those eggs, huh?" Jake pulls away but grabs her right hand, pulling Amy back into the kitchen with him.

"Absolutely," says Amy as Jake moves back to watching the stove. "And while you work on breakfast, I am going to start small." That's the key to managing this mess, she thinks. One disaster at a time. One tiny disaster, like, say, the salad leaves littering the sink. Easy clean-up.

"Cool," say Jake. "Don't forget the knife you threw in there before you try running the garbage disposal."

"Jake, that was _one time_ , and -- oh, right," says Amy, retrieving one of her throwing knives before setting it off to the side.

"Aha!" Jake spins to point the spatula at her accusingly. "I knew I wasn't the one who left it in there last year. You so owe our plumber an admission."

"Gonna owe our plumber a lot more than just a conversation," Amy grumbles as she flips the switch for the garbage disposal and nothing happens.

"Amy Santiago's Tour of Truth," Jake continues as he walks toward the fridge, not having heard her. "Speaking of," he adds, opening the door. "Truth time -- do you or do you not actually enjoy this much pulp in your orange juice?" Amy looks up to see him brandishing her carton of the O.J. with extra pulp.

"I do," says Amy, opening the cupboard to her right to look for a glass. She's met with a pile of shards instead. "Although maybe not today."

"Ew, why?" Jake wrinkles his nose. "It's like a paste."

Amy shakes her head. "No, it's like a smoothie. Only better, because it's healthier."

"Said no one ever," Jake adds.

Amy turns to hide the start of a smile. "So I assume you're still in the camp that views SunnyD and that kind of sugary crap as real orange juice?"

"Oh babe," Jake says with a grin. "You're lucky I'm not making you a Fruit Roll-Up and Gushers burrito right this very morning." He turns back to the toaster and immediately frowns. He jiggles the handle, then turns the machine on its side. Two pieces of soft white bread fall out. "On second thought, maybe I am."

"Cereal?" Amy proposes, and Jake sets to getting out boxes. Amy sets to finding two bowls that are still intact, sorting the broken bits of flatware into the plugged-up sink.

"Too bad we're already married," Amy says. From the corner of her eye, she notices Jake tense up. "I mean, we could really use like another wedding shower," she rushes to continue. "Replace all of this junk for free."

She turns back around to Jake's genuine smile. "Well," he says, "at least the sweet, sweet coffee maker still has our back." He reaches to the left for the pot. "Still like yours terrible and black?"

Amy plucks the nicest mug she can find from the cupboard. When Jake reaches for it, Amy maintains her grip, letting his fingers wrap around hers. She steps in for a brief kiss before allowing Jake to take the cup.

"I do," she says with what she hopes in a reassuring smile. "You know, for as much as things are changing, some things are still the same."

The look Jake gives her in return is purely adoring, soft and so, _so_ familiar. "Samsies," he says, his gaze never leaving her face.

Jake pours the coffee into the mug. It seeps straight out through a crack in the bottom of the cup that Amy failed to notice.

Jake regards the brown puddle forming on the floor in silence for a moment before stepping over it to join Amy by the counter. "Yeah, maybe we sort these out before I serve anything else," he says, putting the broken mug in her 'discard' pile before taking a stack of dishes out of the cupboard.

 

They finish sorting out the kitchen with relative ease, then move onto the front hall after eating. It has the least amount of damage, and, as Amy says, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

"Yup," Jake replies as he nudges Amy over the threshold into the living room, "and the journey of a thousand miles is gonna look like a cakewalk compared to the living room."

"I'm going to put on pants," Amy says in deference, walking around him to get up the stairs.

" 'Journey of a thousand miles,' " Jake says under his breath as she ascends. "Wait!" he calls after her. "Is it too late to change my quip to something about The Proclaimers?" Amy doesn't dignify it with a response. When she comes back downstairs to Jake obnoxiously humming the song, she thinks maybe she should have.

There isn't a question of splitting up. They destroyed the house together, and now they work in tandem to clean it up. It feels right, Amy thinks. They get most of the clutter bundled into black garbage bags, the garbage bags pushed back into the dining room. They hardly use it anyway, and the busted window in there is gonna require more handywork than two people (regardless of extra-legal qualifications) can handle alone.

Amy wonders if she should call Rosa, both to mobilize some sort of clean-up crew and to reassure her things played out okay. She knows the other agent would be awake this early in the morning. Still...

It's selfish. Amy knows it. It's easy, though, to be in a bubble. In a world where it's Jake & Amy alone and they don't have to worry about repercussions because they have each other and they're safe. No one asking questions or throwing blame. And even though their relationship is fine, she knows The Agency will still want Jake in custody at the end of the day.

It's selfish, but Amy wants to hold on to it, to Jake and their own weird normalcy, for as long as she can.

Amy shakes her head and returns to reinforcing the flat-screen TV, which by some miracle stayed on the wall and free of damage. Some of the bolts on the mounting bracket came loose, though, and Amy would just die if it survived their epic firefight just to fall on the floor.

Later. She and Jake can talk about it later, decide on the best course of action for them to take. Together.

Behind her, Jake continues picking bullets out of the sofa. In the aftermath, they were both pretty torn up about the poor piece of furniture, it being their favorite fixture of the room.

Amy sighs, moving to check the stability of the room's curtain rod while she has the tools handy. "It was such a good couch."

"He still is," Jake grumbles from across the room. "I never leave a man behind."

Amy shuts and latches the front window with a laugh.

The chuckle dies in her throat. She shut the window. The intact front window. The window which had no discernable reason to be open - just a crack.

"Ames?"

Amy ignores Jake, turning back to look out at the front yard. It's quiet out there. Too quiet.

"Babe?" Amy hears Jake padding towards her, feels him stop at her shoulder. "You okay?"

Amy frowns, pushing the drapes back into place. Something is wrong. Something is really, really wrong. Jake must notice too, given his silence and the amount of space he's giving her. The ticking of the clock seems thunderous in the quiet.

Jake whips to look at what's left of the obnoxious grandfather grandfather clock, startling Amy. He turns to look at her again with alarm. "How is that pile of junk making noise?"

Amy sucks in a harsh breath. They both turn to look at the splintered remains strewn across the floor before approaching the debris.

In true Jake fashion, her husband begins by kicking the stack of wood.

"Jake," says Amy.

Jake continues to knock the pieces around with his foot. "What? What if it's a pigeon, or a rodent making that noise? I don't want to touch it with my hands?"

"Why would a pigeon be -- oh." Amy sees it. There it is. "Oh no."

Next to Jake's bare foot is a black, plastic box. It's smooth, square, and smaller than a breadbox. The top side seems to have some kind of timer, a bright green panel with moving digital type. The ticking is suddenly louder.

Jake puts his foot under the far side of the device and nudges it toward them. He frowns down at it, as if trying to read the timer better.

"Don't move it," Amy hisses. "Motion might set it off!"

Jake stretches out his uninjured leg and gently kicks the bomb back to its original place on the floor.

"Jake!" Amy hisses. She grabs him by the closest shirtsleeve and yanks her husband backwards. Nothing happens. Jake and Amy release tandem sighs of relief.

"Okay," says Amy, voice a bit shaky. "Okay." She rubs her thumb against Jake's bicep, resisting the urge to fidget further. "Alright, what do we do?"

Jake looks at her, then does a double-take. “Wait, what? You don’t know how to defuse it?”

Amy arches an eyebrow at him. “Do you?”

Jake snorts. “I mean…” He flaps his hands around, gesturing at the bomb. Amy is less than reassured.

“OK, fine,” Jake says, “I’m a badass superspy, but I deal mostly in intel, covert ops – ”

“You’re on desk duty, aren’t you?” Amy says.

Jake raises one finger. “Semantics. And _no_ , I do field work.” Amy squints at him and shakes her head. “ _When_ it involves computers and files and gunk.”

“OK, well this looks all… gadget-y,” says Amy. It doesn’t have a timer, but it’s more sophisticated than a pipe bomb, and the clicking sounds mechanical, quiet-yet-even. “Your moment to shine, Pineapples.”

“Mmmmm yeah,” Jake agrees. “I, however, am man enough to admit I’m not up to this task. I am stepping back, literally and metaphorically, because I believe that you, Amelia Santiago, are trustworthy and capable of handling this for the both of us.”

“What?” Amy hisses. “Bullshit. If I’m touching the bomb, you’re touching the bomb.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Jake replies. He kneels down to the floor and gets comfortable.

Amy joins him, sitting gingerly next to the device. “I want you to hold the body still while I work on the wires.”

Jake obliges, his large hands steadier than she expected. Amy takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. She opens the small back compartment.

It's a mess. There's a tangle of wires, all of them red. There's little plastic tags on some of them, and markings on the panel where some of them enter the... ends? The ends, she guesses she would call them, of the bomb. Amy reaches out with determination to grab at one wire before realizing using her bare hands might not be the best course of action.

“Toolkit,” Amy announces. “We need to get a toolkit. And gloves. Probably gloves. Safety first right?”

“We have no idea what we’re doing, do we?” Jake asks.

"Nnnnnnope," Amy confirms.

Jake gently lowers the box to the floor. "You get the toolkit, I'll pull up Google on my phone."

They reconvene a few minutes later, Amy be-gloved and Jake be-gadgeted.

“Wait!” cries Jake before raising his phone above their heads. He beams up at the camera. “Bomb defusing selfie!”

Amy rolls her eyes but brandishes the wire cutters with a smile.

Jakes lowers his phone to reading level and clears his throat. "Siri," he states, enunciating more than usual, "how do you defuse a bomb?"

"Searching results," a tinny voice responds, "How to Defuse a Bomb Playing Counter-Strike."

"Jake," Amy sighs.

"Right," Jake says, thumbing open his Internet browser and search history. "Quora here we come... OK, Option One,” Jake reads aloud, “A controlled explosion in a safe environment.”

“Not gonna fly,” Amy replies curtly. She did briefly consider letting it go in Gary and Mary’s swimming pool, but she figured Neighborhood Watch would finger them as the culprits with relative ease. Stupid suburbs.

“Mmmmmkay, Option Two,” Jake continues, “Disconnect the explosive thingy from the trigger. Soooo we’d still have a bomb but we wouldn’t set it off, I guess?”

Amy nods. “Which part is the trigger here?”

“No clue.”

Amy tries and fails not to whimper. “Oh God. Oh God. Okay, um. I can maybe reroute the wires?"

Jake juggles his phone for a minute before he's back to business. "'Kay, I got you, babe. Googling... 'reroute bomb wires'... not fiction or video game..."

Amy plucks the end of one red wire from the comparment's roof, then another. Nothing explodes. She counts it as a win, then squints to see if she can decipher any kind of labels inside to get an idea of what needs reconfiguring. It's dark, and what little writing there is looks impossibly tiny. Frick.

"It is impossible to see in there," says Jake as if reading her mind. "Here, let me - "

Amy slaps his hand away. "Get your bear paws out of there," she reprimands.

"Or what, you'll cut them off?" Jake moves his hand but cranes his neck to get a better look inside the box. "Put the wire in your left hand in the plug the right wire came from. Leave the right wire disconnected though."

Amy prods the hole with the tip of the wire but meets resistance. She growls. "It's _there,_ it just doesn’t want to go in."

" _It's There, It Just Doesn’t Want to Go In_ , title of your sex tape," Jake crows. The wire snaps into place right as Amy makes to smack him.

"OK, now take this wire out," Jake continues, pointing to but not touching the second wire from the left.

"You sure?" Amy asks. "You _are_ looking at it upside down."

Jake whips his neck in the opposite angle and studies bomb again. "Yep, definitely this one," he confirms, pointing to the same wire as before. "Trust me."

Against her better judgment, Amy does. Again, nothing explodes. Still, she waits for the other shoe to drop.

Cautiously, Jake turns the bomb over. The sickly green timer reads "00:00," but it's not flashing. With a _whoosh_ of breath, Jake slumps forward.

"Is that it?" Amy asks.

"I think that's it, yeah," Jake replies.

Amy jumps to her feet. She tears off her gardening gloves and spikes them onto the neutralized plastic device. " _Yeah! Unh!_ In your face, explosives case!"

"Yeeeah!" Jake whoops, jumping up as well. He holds both hands up flat. "C'mon, up top!"

Amy high-fives her husband with both hands, then extends her own. "Down low."

Jake obliges, then leans forward. Amy meets him for a chest bump and exaggerated grunt, then steps back. Her face hurts from smiling.

They take a second to relax, letting the dust settle, before Amy realizes she can still hear faint-yet-even, mechanical clicking.

Jake keeps smiling, but it cracks a smidge. “It’s still ticking, right?” he asks. “I’m not hearing things?”

“Yep, and nope,” Amy replies, heart rate rocketing up once more. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yep!” Jake agrees, and then they’re sprinting through the kitchen to the laundry room. Amy has her right hand on the door leading from the washroom to the garage when she feels her husband’s grip on her left wrist, pulling her to a stop.

“Wait, one sec!” Jake lets go and snakes an arm behind the dryer. It jogs Amy’s memory, has her reaching behind the washing machine for her unmarked, black duffle bag. If ever she needed her emergency supplies, now would be the time.

It doesn’t hit Amy until she has the bag half unzipped, double-checking that nothing’s missing, that she keeps _her_ emergency bag behind the dryer.

Startling, Amy looks up to see Jake rifling through an identical bag with a frown. He glances up, noticing her matching expression. “Is this – ”

Amy cuts him off by grabbing the front of his T-shirt and pulling him down for a sloppy kiss. She pulls away, Jake's astonished grin sparkling behind her eyes as she looks back down into his emegency bag. **  
**

It's a mess. Wrinkly clothes for him, what might be clothes for her at the bottom there somewhere... definitely more snack foods than Amy thought to put in hers. "This is just random stuff thrown in a bag," Amy accuses.

Jake puts a hand on his chest, feigning offense. "I planned far enough ahead to pack it," he defends. "That took foresight." He takes a minute to glance inside Amy's bag in his hands. "Is this itemized by usefulness?"

"Vacuum-sealed bags to fit more stuff in, too," Amy replies, pulling on the nearest pair of shoes, which happen to be her rubber rainboots. “Speaking of planning, whose car are we taking?” she asks.

Jake looks chagrined. “Mmmmmay or may not have forgotten to put gas in mine when I ran out for groceries Friday night.”

Amy sighs. “My car it is then,” she says before sprinting toward the garage, Jake hot on her heels. She hears him laugh and looks back to find him toying with her spare glasses as they move.

“This is really your spare pair?” he giggles, flicking a lens like always.

“Shut up,” Amy replies petulantly, turning away to hide a smile of her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S ALIIIIIIIVE! See you in 2018.
> 
> Who wants to start placing bets on which character is really responsible for the double-cross? :)


	5. TRAFFIC, 6:21 AM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which there is a very cool car chase and some very witty dialogue)

“My real name isn’t Santos,” Amy says, fastening her seatbelt with a reassuring click. “It’s Santiago. Both my parents are alive, and I have seven brothers.”

“Well that explains the hyper-competitiveness,” says Jake as he throws the car into reverse and peals out of the driveway. “I can’t believe I ever bought you being an only child. Your tragic parentless, sibling-less, friendless backstory was _riveting_ though, so kudos on that.”

Amy frowns at him. “I never said I was friendless.”

“I thought it was implied, Kylie aside,” Jake counters. He pauses. “Wait, when you say ‘Santiago,’ do you mean _Santiago_ Santiago?”

"Yup," says Amy, watching Jake's eyes widen. His grip tightens on the steering wheel a smidge.

"Oh yikes," he says. Amy glares at him. "I mean, cool!" Jake amends. "Cool cool cool, for sure, for sure, but also... _yikes_. I can see why you didn't want me to actually meet the family."

Amy rolls her eyes and glances in the rearview mirror. “What about you, wise guy? Was your cover for real? Any secret relatives I should know about before they come out of the woodwork?”

“I’m real for real,” Jake replies, zooming through the neighborhood. They pass little Billy O’Brien tossing papers onto the front porches of the old fogies that still get their news in print. The kid dings his bicycle bell at them, and Jake honks and waves out the window in response. “My name is Jake, and I’m an Autumn.” Amy rolls her eyes and motions for him to get on with it. “My last name is Peralta, _but_ I didn’t lie about my dad leaving and my mom raising me. Those were really my parents you met, too, for which I now feel incredibly stupid. I couldn’t _not_ tell my mom about you though. She was so psyched to find someone who liked those porcelain babies she collects.”

“Right, _that’s_ the reason you had to tell her about me. And you’re not stupid, just honest,” Amy replies, feeling defensive on his behalf. Seems like some of Jake's self-esteem issues weren't part of the act.

“Which in this case was stupid,” Jake says, proving her mental point.

"Don't be so hard on yourself," Amy blurts. "I mean... maybe not the best time or place for this. But don't." They're going to be honest with each other from now on. That is absolutely something she should not be afraid to say to her husband, wherever whenever.

"Thanks, babe," says Jake, and Amy can tell he means it.

They drive in comfortable silence for a while. It's early enough that traffic isn't at a standstill, but the roads are busier the further head from suburbia. Amy isn't sure where they're headed, but she trusts Jake, and she trusts that they can talk about it without literally getting up in arms again if they disagree on their destination.

They hit a slow-down, and Jake drums his hands on the steering wheel. He checks the rearview mirrors a couple times before darting a glance in Amy's direction. "So," he says with deliberate lightness. "The Agency... not a terrorist cel?"

Amy almost laughs. Almost. "No. It's..." It feels wrong to be admitting to less-than-legal activity. Like she's walking into a trap - what if Jake is lying about also being a spy, and he's actually a cop looking to catch her?

Amy shakes her head to snap herself out of her thoughts. Her ridiculous, ridiculous thoughts. "We're strictly in espionage."

"Spy stuff," says Jake.

"Espionage," Amy corrects him.

" 'Spy stuff' sounds cooler," Jake argues.

"No it doesn't," counters Amy, " 'espionage' is cooler because it's one word, not two. That and the long A combined with the hard G at the end... oh my God, focus." She catches Jake tamping down a smirk before they both turn to look ahead out the windshield. "We collect information about the illegal activities of other governments, stop intel from getting to the bad guys. Which I _thought_ was you. But we aren't usually provoking direct action, and we're only trained to take people out physically in cases of emergency."

"Huh," says Jake, frowning out the window. He inches them forward. "That sounds basically like what we do."

"At the OVT?" Amy asks, working on getting her facts straight.

"Yes," Jake confirms, "and can I just say, both of our organization's names suck."

Amy nods in agreement. "They're pretty bad, yeah."

Jake turns his eyes back to the road, inching the car forward. "Meanwhile, my super awesome suggestion of 'Thunder Kill Alpha colon Hard Target' goes unappreciated and unused."

Amy shrugs, looking out the window to her right. It's pretty good, actually, she'll give Jake that. "It's just waiting for the perfect opportunity to present itself for use."

Jake gasps. "Like now!" He turns to gaze at her lovingly. "Amy, _you're_ my Thunder Kill Alpha colon Hard Target!"

"Ew," says Amy reflexively before shooting Jake a nicer look. "I mean, thanks."

"It's you and me," Jake continues, squinting into the middle distance. "Just two lone coyotes fending for themselves together on the dusty trail... wait, can it be a strike team if it's just two people? Also, what is our target?"

"Stop," says Amy. It's to figure out who took the data they were both after, but her thoughts on that matter have to wait. Out of the sea of cars surrounding them, there's a flash of silver. Well. There's lots of flashes of silver, and a lot of letters and numbers on a lot of license plates. But there's this silver minivan three cars behind them that looks familiar, like one that was parked on their street earlier in the week. It's a stretch, but something about it makes the hair on the back of Amy's neck stand up. Maybe she's just imagining that the plate number looks familiar.

"No, I know," Jake explains, "it's kind of a mouthful, and the metaphor got weird at the end there, but - "

"No, stop doing... I mean, stop with that train of thought for a second," Amy interrupts, trying not to panic. "Check the rearview. I think there's a silver minivan following us. From back in the suburbs."

Jake's eyes flick up to the mirror. His expression doesn't change much, but it's enough for Amy to know her suspicions were right.

"Ruh-roh, Scoob," her husband mutters before merging left, first one lane then over another. Traffic flows around them, separating them from the car Amy has eyes on. Everyone plods forward a few car lengths. The silver car stays in the same lane, not moving to follow them over.

"Huh," says Amy. Maybe she's just being paranoid.

A Pinto that's seen better days slides into the lane ahead of them, slowing traffic to a halt again. Jake drums his hands on the steering wheel again, making it honk a little this time. It seems to startle him into action.

"So!" he says once more, turning to Amy with a smile. "I bet... that you were a virgin when you met me."

Amy snorts. "You wish." She smiles in kind. "I bet _you_ were a virgin when we met."

Jake rolls his head back so it bumps the headrest, making a wounded _tsk_ sound. "Ah, you got me," he confesses. "Before I met you, I had never so much as looked at another woman. Not with my eyes all the way open, at least. Made being raised by a single mom and grandma _and_ having a female best friend very challenging. On the plus side, it heightened all my other senses, so. I basically gave up having superpowers for you." He turns his head to look at Amy, wrinkling his nose.

Amy screws up her own face in response. "Alright, smart ass. I bet... you aren't really Jewish."

Jake smiles, eyes widening in triumph. "False!"

"Really?" says Amy as he turns his attention back to the road. "How come I knew more about _halakha_ than you last time we went to Trivia Night?"

"Babe, I told you," Jake replies as he inches their car forward, "I forgot literally everything I'd studied once my bar mitzvah ended."

"Huh," Amy muses. "You're really Jewish. Got it."

"Ahhh-ffirmitve," says Jake. Then he frowns. "Maybe don't tell my mom I paused at the start there if we re-have this conversation in her presence. Oh!" He glances back at Amy, mischievous glint in his eye. "Can we tell her _you're_ Jewish too?"

Amy snorts. "I didn't take Karen for the type to worry about you settling down with a nice Jewish girl."

"She's not," says Jake, "I just think it'd be funny to take this opportunity to confuse more people." He scrunches his face up in a way Amy knows means he's thinking. "IIIIII beeeeeettt..." His eyes dart toward her before focusing on the road again. "You have a secret other family."

Amy sighs and rolls her eyes. "Jake."

"I'm not hearing a no," her husband chides.

" _No_ ," Amy replies, then hesitates. She wants to joke back at him, keep it light and breezy, but their new Honesty Policy has too much of a grip on her. Her stomach turns. "But I _was_ engaged once before."

"WHAAAAAAT?" Jake shrieks, craning his neck to stare at her again.

Amy meets his glare, opens her mouth to explain. She stops. Amy hears the crack of glass and a whistle. Then, as if on cue, a bullet flies straight between them. It punctures the windshield, finally falling to roll off the hood of their car.

Jake and Amy both whip forward to survey the damage, then turn to look at the back windshield where it entered. The silver minivan from before is on their tail; a passenger wearing a ski mask leans out the window. Amy can't tell the exact make and model of his gun, but she knows it's a doozy if it can propel a single bullet straight through her car.

"On second thought, it can wait," Jake decides. He cranks the steering wheel to the left, angling to merge into the next lane over. Miraculously, every other car that might block their path gets the hell out of their way. The minivan passenger peppers their trunk with bullets right as Jake lays on the gas pedal. Jake swerves a bit as he accelerates, causing him to clip the Pinto in front of them.

"Son of a...!" Jake rolls his window down to yell as they speed by. "Sorry!"

"Jake!" yells Amy. If he hadn't already mentioned his desk jockey past, she probably would have figured it out by the way he stuck his head outside while in the middle of being shot at.

Amy's eyes flick from rearview mirror to sideview mirror and back to the actual back windshield. There's only one shooter, and none of the other cars on the road are trying to block them in. Amy turns fully around to check her blindspots, just in case.

"You got this, babe?" Jake asks, still speeding ahead.

"Yep," Amy assures him before reaching under the passenger's seat. It's her car, and she knows exactly where her spare arms are stored. Amy gets the gun from underneath her, then cracks open the glove compartment. There's a false back to it (a birthday present installed by Rosa), with spare clips stored behind the wall.

It's tricky with the wind blowing her hair in her face and the van being right on their tail. Amy has to learn her entire upper body out the window to get the perfect angle, but she shoots out their pursuer's front right tire on the first try.

"NOICE!" Jake crows, and Amy grins despite the tension.

The van persists; the blown tire makes them fall back, but it also makes them swing around horizontally. The sidedoor slides open to reveal two more guys with guns.

"NOT NOICE," Jake amends.

Before they lose any more distance, Amy shoots the back right tire to keep the van there, then pulls herself back in to avoid the onslaught of bullets.

"Jake," she yells over the din, "Can you - "

"Merge?" asks her husband, already nosing their car to the left. "Oh _hell_ yeah." He gets them up and over as far left as he can at an alarming speed. Amy's pretty sure their trunk is still getting dinged, and the back windshield is totaled. It could be worse.

"Man," says Jake, moving one lane to the right. A black Sedan passes them but doesn't stop. "Traffic is brutal this morning. It's not usually this bad, right?"

"Jake, not now," Amy sighs. Another SUV comes up on their left. Instead of passing, the passenger's side window starts to roll down.

"JAKE!" Amy scrambles to push Jake forward, his face practically smashed into the steering wheel. She lunges over his back to shoot out his window. She clips the passenger in the forearm, his gun flying off then hitting the pavement before he can get a shot in. Amy wants to sigh in relief, but the driver of the SUV is handing their assailant another gun before she can breathe out again.

"You okay?" Jake asks, voice tight from the way he's folded in on his stomach.

"Yeah," Amy answers, "why?"

Jake slams his foot on the gas, and their car zooms forward. They leave the SUV in the dust, but it's still back there, Amy notes, and pretty soon the goons will be on them again.

Amy pulls back into the car and into the passenger's side. She watches Jake straighten up with a new sense of dawning horror.

“Have we been going to a random high school’s plays and musicals for the last five years?” she asks.

Jake grins over at her bright and cheery. “Affirmative!”

“Oh my God.” Amy slumps down in her seat. “Although I now feel significantly less worse about never visiting you at work.”

“Samesies,” Jake chirps, weaving in and out of traffic until five cars separate them from their pursuer.

“Doesn’t explain why you talk like that though,” Amy grumbles, reloading her guns.

Jake snickers and looks at her fondly. “I really  _have_  known Gina my whole life.”

Amy nods. “Makes sense. I really do know her from work, too."

Jake nods in understanding before doing a double take. “Wait,  _Gina is a spy too_? She told me she worked in I.T.!”

“Uhhhhh,” Amy tries, “kinda sorta?”

Fortunately, she’s saved from giving a straight answer by a new round of shots coming their way. It's a navy blue Corsica on their right, on Amy's side, which the gunman announces by shattering the sideview mirror.

Amy snorts. "So dramatic."

"Toight," says Jake, admiring how the bullet hit dead center.

"Eyes on the road!" Amy chastises like she wasn't just pushing his head down before returning fire out the passenger's side window. This one's frustrating, Amy thinks. Something's messed up, like Amy keeps hitting their door and not the person she's aiming for. She feels too exposed, and she feels herself subconsciously moving forward so the shooter is less likely to see (or hit) Jake. One of their assailant's bullets buries itself in the passenger's seat headrest, and yeah, Amy might be biting off more than she can chew on this one.

Jake must sense it, because he speeds up noticeably. Just as the Corsica matches the new speed, Jake hits the brakes and merges right, putting them behind their pursuers.

"Noice," Amy says in admiration, then proceeds to shoot out the car's back windshield. The rest of the vehicle is empty, the driver apparently fending for him or herself. Amy weighs her options as the car attempts to merge left. She settles for shooting the back right tire.

"Pretty sure you had a clear shot, chief," Jake prods.

"I don't want to kill anybody," Amy grumbles. "It isn't... sporting?"

Jake raises an eyebrow. "Uh, kind of think they aren't applying the same ethics to shooting at us, babe."

"I know," Amy sighs. "Being good sucks."

Jake's lips twitch. "Yeaaaaah," he grumbles in agreement before turning serious once more. "So, what was his name?"

Amy's eyes flick to the rearview mirror. "What, that driver? How should I know?"

"Not him," Jake says. Amy doesn't like the way he doesn't even try for a joke, maybe about her being a quadruple agent all along. "I meant your fiancé."

Amy groans and runs a hand down her face. She turns to look at Jake.

"Teddy," she replies.

"Oooooh," says Jake. "This could've gone one of two ways." He turns to look at Amy. "Is it Super Tragic Backstory Time? Because you can wait until you're ready to share if it is."

Amy shakes her head. "No, it's fine. He was just... _super boring_."

Jake raises his eyebrows but doesn't comment yet.

"I mean..." Amy hesitates. "He was super nice, and we had a lot of the same interests... maybe too many of the same interests. He never, like, showed me anything new. Or new and interesting anyway." As much as Amy likes alcohol, there’s only so long she can listen to anyone talk about pilsners.

"Well then this is definitely a Level Up," Jake snarks. "Why did you get engaged then?"

Amy shrugs. "It felt like it was expected of us. We were so young, though. It was right after we graduated from high school, and I broke it off after a week."

"Whoa," says Jake, a genuine smile finally filling up his face. "And thought I couldn't feel any more psyched about getting you all the way down the aisle."

"You done good, champ," Amy agrees with a smile of her own.

Jake bites back a laugh. "I guess you just had to get you a real man… A man who can almost give you a heart attack and get your car shredded in a hail of bullets on your morning commute."

No sooner have the words left his mouth than a stream of ammunition hit the right side of their car. Amy jumps to her left, whipping the flip-down console up so she can sit in the middle of the bench seat.

"... And then they drove away without doing any further damage and everyone made it safely where they wanted to be going!" Jake yells, daring whatever deity made that hailstorm happen to do better. He speeds up to better weave over one lane.

Amy surveys the lane to their right, trying to discern which car the gunfire came from.

"You'd think it would be smarter to have all the separate cars work together to block us off," Jake muses.

"Do not put that thought out into the world," Amy grouses. She pegs the navy blue Corsica from before as the culprit.

Amy scoots back toward the passenger's side of her car, eyeing her target.

"Ames!" says Jake, voice thin and panicked. Amy glances over her shoulder to see the SUV from earlier coming up their left side. The gunman in the passenger's seat no doubt has her husband in his sights.

"Jake, hit the brakes," Amy commands without looking. She doesn't care who's behind them; they have to stop, risk of being rear-ended or no.

Jake obeys; the cars on either side of them keep speeding forward. The gunman on the left accidentally clips the driver of the car on the right, and Amy does a tiny fist pump.

She doesn't celebrate for too long when both cars pull (very illegal, her mind screams) U-turns to double back. They barrel down the highway in tandem, firing a few rounds into the hood of Amy's car. She sends up a prayer that her engine block remains unscathed.

"Jake," says Amy, but her husband is already accelerating in reverse like he read her mind. A harsh grinding sound makes Amy's stomach knot up; she whips around to see the Pinto from before, its front fender now bent out of shape.

"What?" says Jake, twisted back to look himself. "NO, _come on_!" He looks back out the front windshield. "Amy, is there any way we can go forward again?"

"Not yet," Amy decides. She's getting low on ammo, and what she has isn't strong enough to do damage from this distance.

"Okay," Jake sighs. He flips on his turn signal in an attempt to coordinate a backwards merge with the poor Pinto driver. "But I have to break it to you - our insurance rate is going to be ruined after this."

Amy snorts in spite of herself. "Like it wasn't already."

"I told you," Jake insists, backing into the next lane right as the Pinto moves left, "the Lewis's cat jumped out in front of me, and I swerved to avoid it!"

"Three times in one week?" Amy asks. Behind them, the cars on the road fan out, trying to avoid the mess they're making.

"No," Jake admits, "it was a raccoon once. Which, now that I think of it, I should've used to contribute to my argument that we should get a dog."

Amy looks back ahead. The two cars coming after them have slowed down. There's a gap between them, not wide enough to call a lane, but maybe...

"Stop," Amy tells Jake.

"Okay," says Jake, slowing considerably but not quite coming to a standstill. "Now what?"

Amy points forward, and Jake follows her direction. "Now we gun it."

Jake raises his eyebrows. "Forward."

"Yeah, just go... straight between them." Amy cringes. "Oh crap, it sounds super bad when I say it out loud."

"Straight toward the two cars," Jake repeats. "The two cars with armed guards who want us dead and won't hesitate to kill us. Okay. Cool! Cool cool cool cool cool. Cool." He breathes in, then out again. "Cool. There isn't enough room."

"I know," says Amy, "I'm willing to lose the sideview mirrors. And a lot of paint." She reloads her gun, then turns to fully look at Jake. "But I think we can do it." She hopes he can trust her like she's trusting the cars around them to act as a temporary barrier.

Jake swallows hard, but he holds her gaze. "Well," he says cheerfully after a minute. "That's all the encouragement I need to actually do this!"

Jake shifts the car back into Drive. He exhales slowly.

Amy glances over at her husband. She doesn't want to distract him, but... "Aren't you going to say the thing?"

"What thing?" Jake frowns back at her.

"You know, from _Die Hard_ ," says Amy, feeling stupider and stupider as each word comes out of her mouth. Maybe it was a front, but Jake's been pretty vocal about his love for the series from Day One, so Amy finds herself pointing her gun up at the ceiling and glaring at him in a crude approximation of Bruce Willis. "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers," she growls.

It's like a lightswitch flips on inside Jake. " _That_ was beautiful," he tells her earnestly. "When this is over, I want you to record that for my ringtone. No! I _need_ you to record that for my ringtone."

Amy cocks her gun and brings it back down with a smile. "What's in it for me?"

One of the cars stuck in the gridlock behind them honks.

"Shameless, the way we flirt," Jake quips with a shake of his head. Then his foot is on the gas pedal and they're careening toward death.

Amy tries to keep her internal stream of " _oh god oh god oh god oh god_ " strictly on the inside. She breathes in. She can do this.

Amy breathes out, then leans on her window. As they approach, the pulls the trigger and clips the passenger with the gun in the arm one more time. They get a shot off, but it goes crooked into the passenger's side door.

Quick as a flash, Amy leans across Jake's lap to pull the same trick on the driver of the other car. She clips him higher up, near the shoulder, and the gunman flails back hard enough to distract the passenger on that side.

It happens so fast, Amy feels like throwing up. Instead, she throws herself back into the passenger's seat as the unholy shriek of metal-on-metal subsides, as she and Jake squeeze what's left of her car through the gap and zoom back onto the open road.

Amy gulps in a few jagged breaths. "You okay?" she squeaks. She can't stop shaking.

"Super," Jake squawks. From the corner of her eye, Amy can only see how white his knuckles are, hanging onto the steering wheel for dear life.

Amy nods a few times, takes a few more breaths in without exhaling.

"Take this exit," she commands without thinking.

"Where are we going?" Jake asks, already starting to merge.

"I don't know," Amy admits, shaking, _shaking_. "I don't know, we just need to pull over."

Jake nods, a weird jerky motion that convinces Amy this won't just be for calming her own nerves.

They take the exit; Amy doesn't read any of the signs, honestly disoriented. It's stupid, but they have to stop, they just have to. Jake drives one mile, maybe two, but it isn't long before he's signaling to the other cars that he's about to pull over. It's a broad shoulder, Amy thinks numbly.

Jake puts what's left of the car in park and flips on the hazard lights. **  
**

Amy lets out a shaky breath, then unbuckles her seatbelt to sink as low as she can into her seat. It’s not comfortable, but she needs to _just_ … not for a minute. Beside her, Jake slaps his hands on the steering wheel a few times. He shakes his head, the motion carrying downward into a full-body shudder. He shakes his arms again, then crams the heels of his hands into his eyes. Amy copies him, rubbing some of the tension out of her face. She flexes her feet up and down a few times.

When she looks back to her left, Jake has his left forearm across the wheel to better turn in her direction.

“In the interest of re-having every conversation in the past five years,” Jake starts, casual as ever, even running a hand through his hair. Amy can't remember ever seeing him do that. “Why _did_ you book us with a marriage counselor? Not that there wasn’t… stuff to talk about.” He gestures between them. “I’m just… not sure what it would have been a week ago.”

Amy grimaces, then sighs. “I was doing your laundry – ”

“Aw, babe, you didn’t have to - ”

“I know,” Amy continues. “But I did. And I found this note in one of your pockets about meeting someone named Bianca, and I jumped to conclusions.”  Her frown deepens. “I just… felt like we hit a wall without realizing it. Like we didn’t talk the way we used to.”

Jake snorts as kindly as possible. He turns to look at the road ahead of them. “I bet that won’t be as much of an issue anymore.”

Amy feels her mouth twitch, a small smile coming on. She traces the profile her husband’s face with her eyes. “I hope not.”

She glances down at Jake’s hands. Despite his nonchalance, they’re shaking, just a little. Amy reaches across the car to grab his right hand with her left. Jake starts, turning to meet her gaze again.

“Hey,” says Amy, trying to hide her grin. “I bet you’re still happy we got married.”

Jake ducks his head, but Amy doesn’t miss the smile breaking on his face. “Hmm,” he says before looking up again, trying for something more serious. “Perhaps. Bet you’ll want to stick with me after all of this gets sorted out?”

Amy doesn’t bother hiding her happiness any longer. “Maybe,” she teases, scooting closer toward him. “I bet you want to get married for real and start a family.”

Jake’s laugh is brighter than the sun on the horizon behind them. “Aww, how’d you know?” he crows. He leans toward Amy, taking her other hand. “I do, and I bet you do too.”

Amy leans in to close the gap between them.

Before she can get there, though, another bullet whizzes past the back of Jake’s head at a diagonal, cracking their windshield into an even worse spider-web.

“Maybe not right now though,” Jake amends, ducking forward even further.

“Good plan,” Amy agrees, pulling at the back of his shirt to move him closer.

“This is, what, car number four?” Jake asks, eyes flicking up toward the rearview mirror. “What a weird number, you’d think three or five, but _four_ – ”

“Jake,” Amy interrupts, trying not to interrupt. “I’m out of ammo, and I really don’t think we can start the car without it blowing up on us at this point.”

Jake pauses. “Right,” he says after a beat. “Right, right, right. Right. Fuck. Uhhhh.” Two more bullets fly through the back window into the seat behind them. Jake slides onto the floor, trying to twist to see behind them. “Can you see where it’s coming from?”

Amy can. It’s a rusty red pickup truck, just the driver pulling double-duty. The dude's directly behind them and approaching fast. There's no way they can get back on the road in time. Amy looks up ahead. Nothing out of the ordinary; two cars zoom by from the on-coming lane, but they don't slow down. It doesn't look like anyone is coming to box them in or back this guy up.

“New plan,” Amy tells her husband as she slides down to join him on the cramped floor.

“Which is?” Jake asks.

“ _Duck_.”

Any lingering thoughts Amy had about maybe getting her car out of this in any way, shape, or form, are shattered like the glass raining in her hair. _Sayonara_ , Sonata. The metal frame creaks and clangs as the bullets keep flying. Mercifully, nothing too sharp or heavy falls on her and Jake.

A few minutes pass before the shooting stops. Amy and Jake stay frozen on the floor for a breathless minute, and then another. Amy counts to thirty-Mississippi before she can't wait any longer. She takes her hands away from the back of her head. The world doesn't end.

Jake and Amy both look up at the squeak of a car door opening, at the sound of steps approaching. Amy stops breathing as the footfalls get louder, until they stop right by Jake’s door. Her eyes dart up; she can only see a shadowy figure, no discernible features. He leans toward the window to peer in, and Amy can also see that he’s standing closer to the driver’s side door than is smart.

“ _BLAH_!” Jake does a weird scream-shout thing as he reaches up and swings open the door. It wallops the shooter in the stomach, knocking him down to the pavement outside. Amy pushes Jake back down, jumping over him on the seats so she can get out first, gun in hand. Their assailant looks up at her, but before he can react, Amy brings the butt of her gun across his face with a _crack_. The man falls back on the road like a rag doll.

"I love you so much right now," Jake declares.

Amy turns around to see her husband stepping out, watching her with some prime Adoring Eyes. She looks back down at the unconscious man at her feet.

"Ohhhhhh wow," she squeaks. " _Wow_ , that got out of hand. Is he okay?" Amy bends down to check the guy's pulse.

"I mean," Jake adds, coming forward to lean down beside her, "I love you also all the rest of the time, but right now especially." With a grunt, he lifts their former assailant under the man’s armpits. "Grab his legs?"

They put the poor guy behind the wheel of Amy's car, conked out with his head on the steering wheel. Jake swipes his car keys and grabs their bags from the trunk while Amy swipes her registration information from the glove box. The state of New York will be able to prove its hers from the plates, but if she has enough time and enough wits later today, maybe she can report it stolen. She could even get fancy and have Gina backdate the information in the system... if she can get a hold of Gina. The spare cell phone Amy had stored in her duffle bag got blasted into uselessness, and she bets Jake’s didn’t fare much better.

"Three-quarters of a tank of gas," Jake notes, nodding his approval as he starts the car. "Smart man." He waits for Amy to fasten her seatbelt before pulling back onto the road.

Amy sighs, at long last letting all the tension from earlier seep out of her body. She reaches across the center console, and Jake takes her hand without looking away from the road.

"Plan time," Amy declares after a few minutes spent simply breathing.

"Okay," Jake agrees. "You said something about having your old place in Brooklyn before? If I take thaaaat exit up ahead there, I think I can remember how to get there."

"Negative," says Amy. "We can’t risk getting trapped in the traffic there. Also, I mentioned it because a sniper cornered me there last weekend and ruined everything inside."

"Aww, babe." Jake squeezes her hand. "Wait, what did you still have there?" He spares Amy a glance. "Is that where the decorative spoons went? I knew there was no way you'd sell those."

"The sentimental value is - okay, _later_ , we need to focus," Amy starts to argue before correcting herself.

Jake drums his fingers on the steering wheel. Amy can practically see the gears in his head turning. He’s more focused than she thinks she’s ever seen him, busy plotting something. She won’t lie, it’s pretty hot. "Okay," he says after a few minutes of contemplation.  “Truth time -- how much do you trust your boss?”

“She’s not the first person I would turn to in this scenario,” Amy admits.

“Alrighty then.” He checks the rearview mirror to make sure they aren’t still being followed before taking the next exit. “Amelia Santiago, prepare to meet Raymond Holt.”

That, more than anything else that came their way in the past hour, hits Amy like a ton of bricks. "Raymond Holt? _The_ Raymond Holt?" She turns to stare at Jake, feeling like her eyes are about to pop out of her head. She thinks a little slaw-jawed-ness is to be forgiven, though. Holt is, like, a legend she heard about growing up, never any solid proof throughout the years, but just enough hushed talk about him to make her believe he existed. The dude's been secretly fighting the good fight since the '70s, keeping his head down and out-maneuvering every intel cel that tried to trap him. Amy sincerely hopes she remembered to pack a spare bra in her emergency supply bag. First impressions are _crucial_.

At Jake's hum she's taking for a "yes," Amy looks back out what's left of the windshield. She wants to bask in this moment, savor the silence until they reach their destination. She sighs. Still. For honesty's sake, Amy supposes she should get one more confession out of the way.

“ ‘Amy’ isn’t short for 'Amelia',” she blurts, “it’s short for 'America'.”

Jake looks at her like Christmas came on his birthday. “Oh my God, this is the best day ever.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Spoiler Alert** : MY FICTIONAL BABIES ARE GETTING MARRIED FOR REALZ!!! I didn't read the spoilers for once, and I legit screamed when the proposal happened. My dog thought I was being attacked; it was great.
> 
> For what it's worth, I totally meant that I'd update in 2018 as a joke! My depression knocked me on my ass toward the end of last year, though, so here we are. I also wound up deleting 2/3 of what I'd already written for this chapter because I wasn't happy with it. This, though. This I like.
> 
> If you hadn't noticed, my kink is when couples actually talk to each other. Not even about important stuff, just shooting the shit. Gets me good and fired up... which is weird now that I think of it because I'm not talkative in real life. Huh. Jake & Amy just wanted to keep talking to each other, though, so here it go.


End file.
